Maharashtra trains staffers, focuses on health condition of women for healthier kids

Pune: The state has started reaching out to newly married couples and pregnant women and keeping a tab on their health conditions to ensure delivery of healthy children.

The government, as a part of its scheme, will train its staffers at the public health centre level to check the body mass index, haemoglobin level and other serious ailments of the newly married women, and take necessary measures to ensure that their children are healthy.

The scheme was initially started as a pilot in two talukas of Nashik and is currently going on in 10 districts. The programe 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.

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 and long-term conditions and diseases such as hypertension, tuberculosis, severe anaemia, epilepsy, cardiac ailments, reproductive tract infections and goiter. Asha workers, medical officers and nurses would also be trained to make the initiative a success.

Dr Ashok Nandapurkar, the civil surgeon of Pune district, said, "Any woman with BMI less than 18.5 or more than 25 would be referred to medical experts, who will test them for diabetes, HIV, sickle cell, hypertension, cardiac ailments and TB. If a woman has any of these medical conditions, she will be referred to doctors for further treatments."

He said, "The aim is to have healthy mothers and children."