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Journalism of Courage
NEW DELHI, JULY 26: The Government will launch next month an action-plan to intensify efforts in population-stabilisation, with Delhi as the initial nodal-point for the programme.
The plan envisages setting up a model in which major city-hospitals would provide family-planning and the entire range of health-services to urban slums as well as rural areas in neighbouring states. The plan would focus on the BIMARU states of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Orissa which together account for 40 per cent of India8217;s population in recent years.
The model, for which an estimated Rs 40 crore would be spent, would be extended later to other parts of the country.Facilities available under the three departments in the health ministry departments of health, family-welfare and Indian Systems of Medicine and Homeopathy would be converged or integrated to improve health services, Thakur said.
The model is initially being envisaged as one in which specialists from city hospitals would conduct one-day camps in slums and rural areas, followed by weekly or fortnightly re-visits.Besides providing general medical services such as orthopaedics, paediatrics, eye-care and skin-care, the camps would do blood-testing for HIV, malaria, and even sugar and lipid profiles, Thakur said.The Health Ministry has also drawn up an elaborate list of 37 action-points to achieve the National Population Policy8217;s long-term goal of population stabilisation by 2045.
They include freezing the seats in the Lok Sabha and the State Assemblies till 2026, formulating a scheme to reward panchayats with the best performance, starting health-insurance scheme for couples below poverty-line undergoing sterilisation, decentralising the family-planning exercise by involving non-government organisations, and holding reproductive and child health care RCH camps in rural areas.The Government also plans to promote no scalpel vasectomy8217; a technique that does away with major surgery for sterilisation in a big way.
