MCH-STAR in the News

Maternal and Child Health Sustainable Technical Assistance and Research (MCH-STAR) is a project launched recently with support from USAID and IndiaCLEN, Population Foundation of India and Public Health Foundation of India as partners. (IndiaCLEN stands for India Clinical Epidemiology Network)

The project is supplemental effort and not a duplication of work done by the state movements and the Centre. The issues and projects address are: Maternal Health; Child Health, Child and Maternal Nutrition and Neonatal Mortality and Newborn Care.

Its goal is also four-fold namely development of proactive, well-informed technical leaders who have experience of ushering in change; partnership reaping the best of experience and expertise of public and private domains; successful policies, programmes and interventions taken to scale; and a robust cadre of world-class public health experts.

So far, so good. Now, lets begin with the buzz. It seems a senior health sector official ruefully admitted that the feels ashamed to present the Indian scenario to the international fora and that he makes the powerpoint figures relating to maternal health and child care by hiding them behind a sheet of paper. And, indeed, why not? Every seven minutes , a women dies in India while giving birth to a child.

During the first six weeks after delivery, the risk of death for an Indian mother is two times more than that of an average Asian mom, 60 times more compared with mothers in developed countries and (hold your breath!) 600 times more than the risk faced by Swedish mothers.

Three infants under 12 months and four-five children under five years of age die in India every minute. In other words, 1.5 million do not live to celebrate their first birthday and two-three millions die before they are five.

If such sobering statistics do not bothers us, then nothing will. The good thing is that the way out of this rut is not all that treacherous. For instance, maternal health needs informed family members who seek for the patient obstetric care services without delay at the nearest health centre with obstetric emergency care. And attendance at delivery during the first 24 hours with reasonable emergency facilities at a standby.

Moreover, with the current health infrastructure in place, child deaths can readily be avoided. And this, without new drugs, new vaccines or new technology.

To beat child nutrition, all that is needed is breastfeeding within the first four hours of life, food supplements and a few vitamins. For mammas, you need sufficient and healthy dietary intake during pregnancy with iron folic acid and calcium supplements.  These basic requirements are not difficult to come by and go a long way to avert tragedies.

Of course, there are very few well-equipped health centres, add to it the acute shortage of qualified personnel and infrastructure, which is on the average of collapse. Yet we have to hang on, because out very survival depends on it.

If we don’t stop being determined and hopeful, then surely there is light at the end of the tunnel. And we have every reason to believe that this group of well-meaning people will not let us down. Amen.