New Delhi:
To ensure proper care of women and newborns during child birth, the Union 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 on 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 standardized 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.