15-Sep-2017: President launches nationwide Swachhta Hi Seva Jan Andolan from Kanpur
The President Shri Ram Nath Kovind launched the nationwide Jan aandolan, Swachhta Hi Seva, from Iswarigunj, a village in Kanpur district of Uttar Pradesh. With this the whole country swings in to mass Shramdaan for toilet making and cleaning of public places for next two weeks.
The campaign is being coordinated by the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, the convening Ministry for the Swachh Bharat Mission. The objective of the campaign is to mobilise people and reinforce the “Jan Aandolan” for sanitation to contribute to Mahatma Gandhi’s dream of a Clean India. It will see large scale mobilisation of people from all walks of life to undertake Shramdaan for cleanliness and construction of toilets and to make their environments free from open defecation. There will be targeted cleaning of public and tourist places.
Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation has made elaborate plans along with the State Governments to involve people from various walks of life and make this an unprecedented people’s campaign. Reaching out to the poor and marginalised and providing them with sustainable sanitation services would be the hallmark of this campaign.
“Swachhta Hi Seva” Campaign is an unprecedented campaign to highlight, once again, the jan aandolan that is the Swachh Bharat Mission. This follows an impassioned call by the Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, ahead of the 3rd anniversary of Swachh Bharat Mission that falls on 2nd October, 2017. The objective of the campaign is to mobilise people between 15th September and 2nd October, reigniting the “jan aandolan” for sanitation. Union Ministers, MLAs, MPs, iconic celebrities of India, sports stars, inter-faith leaders, corporates, etc. have been appealed to join in this campaign towards Swachhta.
The President administered the nation-wide “Swachhta Hi Seva” pledge in Kanpur, which simultaneously initiated parallel action in all Gram Panchayats and cities of the country. He honoured village level champions from Uttar Pradesh who have contributed to making various villages, including Iswarigunj, open defecation free. The President also launched the Solid and Liquid Waste Management activities in the village which is the next major step in Swachhta after getting the villages Open Defecation Free.
Speaking on the occasion, the President said that every citizen who works for Swachhta is a rashtra-nirmata (nation builder). He called upon all citizens to join the Swachhta Hi Seva movement and become a rashtra-nirmata. He congratulated all award winning Swachhta champions present and said that they were the real heroes of this jan aandolan. He quoted a World Bank study that says that lack of Sanitation costs the country 6% of GDP annually, adding that the weakest sections of society are the ones most affected by this problem. He spoke about diseases transmitted by open defecation, concerns around dignity and safety of women, and economic loss to the family.
He called upon people from all sectors - elected representatives, corporates, NGOs, women, children, senior citizens, Panchayati Raj institutions, media and the youth - to come forward and contribute to the Swachh Bharat movement with vigour and enthusiasm.
5-Sep-2017: Health Ministry launches two new contraceptives.
The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has launched two new contraceptives, an injectable contraceptive MPA under the ‘Antara’ programme and a contraceptive pill, ‘Chhaya’, in the public health system to expand the basket of contraceptive choices to meet the emerging needs of couples. The contraceptives, which are available for free in Medical Colleges and District Hospitals at present, have so far been launched in 10 states that includes Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Haryana, West Bengal, Odisha, Delhi and Goa. The contraceptives are safe and highly effective, the ‘Antara’ injectable being effective for three months and the ‘Chayya’ pill for one week, and will help meet the changing needs of couples and help women plan and space their pregnancies. Training of healthcare practitioners from all the states has been completed as well, with a pool of state and district level doctors and staff nurses being trained to support the roll-out.
To help improve the supply and distribution of contraceptives, the Ministry had recently launched a new software, Family Planning Logistics Management Information System (FP-LMIS), designed to provide robust information on the demand and distribution of contraceptives to health facilities and ASHAs.
In addition, Mission Parivar Vikas, a central family planning initiative has also been launched by the Ministry. The key strategic focus of this initiative is on improving access to contraceptives through delivering assured services, ensuring commodity security and accelerating access to high quality family planning services.
The mission is being implemented in 146 high focus districts with the highest total fertility rates in the country. These districts are in the seven high focus, high Total Fertility Rates (TFR) states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Assam, which constitute 44% of the country’s population.
The main objective of the Mission Parivar Vikas family planning initiative is to bring down the Total Fertility Rate to 2.1 by the year 2025.
The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, through its sustained family planning efforts, aims to achieve its goal of increasing modern contraceptive usage and ensure that 74% of the demand for modern contraceptives is satisfied by 2020, with continued emphasis on delivering assured services, generating demand and bridging supply gaps. The Ministry’s focus remains on increasing awareness and demand through a holistic communications campaign that has simultaneously been rolled out across all states of India.
3-Aug-2017: Breastfeeding Week to promote breastfeeding
Breastfeeding Week is observed in the first week of August to focus attention on the important aspect of promotion and support of breastfeeding. The theme of this year’s breastfeeding week is ‘Sustaining Breastfeeding’. The Ministry of Health & Family Welfare has planned various activities at the national level during this week in association with IAP and Rammohan Lohia Hospital.
To intensify the efforts further for promotion of breastfeeding, the Health Ministry has initiated a nationwide programme called “MAA-Mother’s Absolute Affection'’ to bring undiluted focus on promotion of breastfeeding and provision of services towards supporting breastfeeding, along with ongoing efforts of routine health systems. In addition, “National Guidelines on Lactation Management Centres in Public Health Facilities” have been recently released to facilitate establishment of lactation management centres for ensuring that the sick and pre-term babies are fed with safe human breast milk.
The key components of the MAA programme are awareness generation, promotion of breastfeeding & inter personal counselling at community level, skilled support for breastfeeding at delivery points and monitoring and Award/ recognition of health facility. Under this programme, ASHA has been incentivized for reaching out to pregnant and lactating mothers and provide information on benefits and techniques of successful breastfeeding during interpersonal communication. ANMs at all sub-centres and health personnel at all delivery points are being trained for providing skilled support to mothers referred with issues related to breastfeeding.
Under NHM, funding support has been recommended for all States and UTs (since 2016) for successful implementation of the MAA programme. 23 States have started implementing various activities under MAA programme such as one day sensitization of health staffs, convergence meetings with line departments, Infant and Young Child Feeding (IYCF) training of staffs at health facilities, communication activities using mass media and mid-media etc. Around 2.5 lakhs ASHAs and 40,000 health staffs including programme managers at district and block level, doctors (MOs), staff nurses (SNs) and ANMs have been sensitized for breastfeeding promotion strategies under MAA programme and around 2800 health facility staffs (MOs, SNs and ANMs) are trained in 4 days IYCF training. In addition more than 75,000 mother’s meetings were also carried out by ASHAs at village level to sensitize mothers regarding importance of appropriate breastfeeding practices.
Breastfeeding is an important efficient and cost-effective intervention promoting child survival and health. Breastfeeding within an hour of birth could prevent 20% of the newborn deaths. Infants who are not breastfed are 15 times more likely to die from pneumonia and 11 times more likely to die from diarrhoea than children who are exclusively breastfed, which are two leading causes of death in children under-five years of age. In addition, children who were not breastfed are at increased risk for diabetes, obesity, allergies, asthma, childhood leukemia, sudden infant death syndrome etc. Apart from mortality and morbidity benefits, breastfeeding also has tremendous impact on improved IQ.
The trend of breastfeeding has shown an upward trend. As per recent data, initial breastfeeding has been nearly doubled in last decade. i.e. from 23.4 per cent to 41.6 per cent (NFHs-3, 2005-06 and 4, 2015-16). Significant improvement has also been reported for exclusive breastfeeding as proportion of children under age 6 months exclusively breastfed, has gone up to 54.9 (NFHS-4) per cent from 46.4 per cent (NFHS-3). However, there is further scope of improving initial breastfeeding rates considering the high proportion of institutional deliveries in the country.