How a Haryana portal keeps a check on women with high-risk pregnancies

International News
Rajvanti Devi, 38, stood in a long queue of pregnant women, braving the bright midday sun, at a primary health centre in Wazirabad block of Gurugram district, Haryana. This queue is usual on the ninth of every month, when the health centre provides services to pregnant women, particularly those identified with high-risk pregnancies, under India’s Pradhan Mantri Surakshit Matritva Abhiyan (Prime Minister’s Safe Motherhood Programme, PMSMA).
Rajvanti Devi, a mother of two girls, was pregnant for the third time, but she did not know how far into her pregnancy she was. This was her first visit to a health centre, and she was surprised when told she was six months pregnant. Further, the pregnancy was risky, the health centre staff told her, because with a haemoglobin level of 8.8 gm/dL, she was mildly anaemic--the normal range is 12-16 gm/dL for women. The risk was greater as her second child had been born through a caesarean section.
Her pregnancy will be tracked through Haryana’s high-risk pregnancy portal--the only one run by a state government, launched in November 2017--to make sure she receives all required antenatal check-ups, supplements, and referrals to specialists in community health centres or district hospitals. Under this system, Gurugram has recorded 2,750 high-risk pregnancies, and Jhajjar district 3,526.
This is part of Haryana’s ongoing efforts to reduce its maternal mortality ratio (MMR)--past efforts have made the state’s MMR the 12th lowest in the country, having cut it down from 101 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2014-16 to 98 in 2015-17, according to Sample Registration System (SRS) data. The Indian average was 122 in 2015-17.

Haryana’s health ministry has set a target to reduce its maternal mortality ratio to 70 per 100,000 births by 2030. The high-risk pregnancy portal helps register and better track high-risk pregnancy cases, to make sure the women never miss a check-up and their progress is monitored closely....READ MORE

Air pollution from stubble burning costing India $30 bn annually: Study

Current Affairs

Air pollution due to crop residue burning in northern India is a leading risk factor of acute respiratory infections and causes an estimated economic loss of $30 billion annually, according to a study unveiled Monday.

Researchers from the US-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and partner institutes found that living in districts with air pollution from intense crop residue burning (CRB) is a leading risk factor for acute respiratory infection (ARI), especially among children less than five years.

The study that estimates -- for the first time -- the health and economic costs of CRB in northern India also found that CRB leads to an estimated economic loss of over $30 billion annually.

"Poor air quality is a recognised global public health epidemic, with levels of airborne particulate matter in Delhi spiking to 20 times the World Health Organization's safety threshold during certain days," said Samuel Scott, IFPRI Research Fellow and co-author of the study.

"Among other factors, smoke from the burning of agricultural crop residue by farmers in Haryana and Punjab especially contributes to Delhi's poor air, increasing the risk of ARI three-fold for those living in districts with intense crop burning," Scott said in a statement.

The study also estimated the economic cost of exposure to air pollution from crop residue burning at $30 billion or nearly Rs 2 trillion annually for the three north Indian states of Punjab, Haryana and Delhi, researchers said.


 To be published in the upcoming edition of the International Journal of Epidemiology, the study analysed health data from more than 250,000 individuals of all ages residing in rural and urban areas in India...Read More