Mumbai: With the aim of having healthy mothers and children across Maharashtra, the state health department has now decided to reach out to newly married couples and pregnant women to keep a tab on their health conditions to ensure the delivery of healthy children. For this they will be training Asha workers, medical officers and nurses to make the initiative a success. Senior health officials said they will initiate this project in most of the districts, but for now it has been active in two talukas of Nashik district.
“As a part of the government scheme, we will provide training to all public health staffers who will be checking the body mass index, haemoglobin level and other serious health issues of newly married women, and take necessary measures to ensure that their children are healthy,” he said.
The program would be extended to Akola, Buldhana, Latur, Nanded, Akola, Dhule, Jalgaon, Ahmednagar, Kolhapur, Sangli, Ratnagiri, Sindhudurg, Nagpur, Wardha, Bhandara, Aurangabad, Jalna, Parbhani, Hingoli, Pune, Solapur, Satara, Thane and Raigad districts.
“A proper action plan has been made based on the report of a campaign ‘Mata Surakshit, Ghar Surakshit’ where many women above 18 years of age have been diagnosed with anaemia, hypertension, diabetes and mental-related issues. The action plan has been given to district health officers who will implement this initiative,” said an officer from the Family Welfare, Child Care and School Health, Pune.
Senior health official from the state health department said that under the programme, newly married couples especially women, would be checked for diabetes, body mass index (BMI), HIV, blood groups, weight, height, haemoglobin and sickle cell, chronic conditions and diseases such as hypertension, tuberculosis, severe anaemia, epilepsy, cardiac ailments, reproductive tract infections and goitre.
“Any woman with a BMI less than 18.5 or more than 25 would be referred to medical experts, who will test them for health anomalies. In case a woman has any of these medical conditions, she will be referred to doctors for further treatment,” he said.
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