IMR on the rise in Burhanpur

Published in The Pioneer on October 31, 2006

Staff Reporter Bhopal
Burhanpur district in Madhya Pradesh has a maternal mortality ratio of 800 per one-lakh live births and an infant mortality rate (IMR) of 96 per 1,000 births, which is higher than the State's average.

In order to combat this, the district administration has been pushing many schemes to promote institutional delivery, immunisation and other schemes, which the State had launched.

District chief medical & health officer has spent Rs 53 lakh in 2005-2006 and Rs 60 lakh in 2006-2007 (till now) from Information Education and Communication (IEF) funds available under RCH II programme for promoting these schemes, which has had a little impact.

On October 19, district secretary in charge Abha Asthana had been to Doifodia primary healthcentre of the Kharnar block and she had expressed her concern on the situation there. Interestingly, the district does not have any figures of the maternal and infant deaths, which took place in the district so how can success of these schemes be evaluated.
Chief medical and health officer Dr GS Awasia said that the transport scheme had started in 2004 and the department doesn't have IMR and MMR figures of the past two years.

Similarly, the situation is grave in Katni district, where Payri Ma scheme was launched by the State in February 2006 with lot of publicity. The purpose was to promote institutional delivery and help combat maternal mortality. The scheme was launched with aim of getting publicity in the name of social service, without any technical inputs.
Within two months of its launch, glitches started pouring in. In the first month, 224 women were awarded as promised in the scheme, the numbers of awards given (not promised) started dropping after two months. The question was how to fund the same, first it was flexible funds available under different heads. Finally, IEF funds came handy for its survival.

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