Pregnant women, newborns to be registered

New Delhi, Feb 1 (PTI) To ensure proper care of women
and newborns during child birth, the Indian Health Ministry
will soon ensure registration of the country's nearly 27
million pregnancies every year.
"For ensuring proper care of pregnant mothers during
the period of pregnancy, at the time of delivery and following
child birth, we are introducing a system to register every
pregnant mother and newborn child," Health Minister Ghulam
Nabi Azad said Monday.
The women and children will be registered in district
sub-centres and their detailed information, including name of
village, tehsil, district and telephone numbers shall be
available, he said.
Noting that there were nearly 27 million pregnancies
in the country every year, Azad said, this will enable
national, state and district and block level facilities to
ascertain the status of ante-natal care and post natal care
and also delivery at institutions.
Similarly, immunisation of children can be monitored
to identify the dropouts and ensure vaccination of these
children, the minister said at the inauguration of the
Indo-Swedish health week here.
Favouring a framework convention on alcohol control,
Azad said, India supports Sweden's view that a global strategy
has to be adopted by the World Health Assembly in controlling
the risk factors of alcohol.

Azad said the current H1N1 pandemic explicitly
demonstrates that public health security of nations can be
compromised by factors not in their control. "Priorities get
re-determined and resource allocation within public health
goes completely haywire".
He said that India had lessons to learn from Sweden on
controlling lifestyle diseases.
"There is a need for standardised protocols for
testing and treatment to avoid unnecessary and irrational
drugs and procedures particularly for diabetes, cardio-
vascular diseases and cancer," he said.
He said India's strength in the field of generic drugs
could be made use of by Sweden. "India has the highest number
of US FDA approved drugs outside USA and could be a potential
exporter of quality drugs to Sweden."
"Growth of the cheap generic drug industry is also of
vital interest for world health as all health-related
millennium development goals in the developing countries are
dependent on this," he said. PTI SPC
RBT