CAG Picks Gaping Holes In Health Check-Up Of Babies & Mother

Bhubaneswar: 17/9/17; As per guidelines framed by the government, health check-up includes ante-natal care of expectant mothers, post-natal care of nursing mothers with new born and children below six years of age. High risk mothers with bad obstetrical history and other diseases were also to be referred to appropriate health care institutions for special care.

The periodic health check-up of children is seriously deficient and that of pregnant women and nursing mothers was significantly low, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) in its report said.

The CAG report, which was placed before the state assembly, detected shortfall and discrepancies in the health check-up mechanism.

Health check-up was provided to 30 percent of the eligible children, 56 per cent of the pregnant women and 50 per cent of the nursing mothers in the State during 2011-16, according to the report.

In the eight sampled districts, the shortfall was 65 per cent for children, 36 per cent for pregnant women and 38 per cent for lactating mothers during 2011-16. This indicated that health checkup service provided to the beneficiaries was not adequate, even though the State remained higher in Maternal Maternity Rate (230 per one lakh live births) and Infant Mortality Rate (56 per one thousand live births) than the national average (167 and 42 respectively) during 2012-13.

The maternal mortality rate (MMR) of the country indicates 167 number of mothers dying per 100,000 live birth while India’s national average Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) stands at 42 per 1,000 live births.

The women and child welfare department of Odisha government was also found wanting in health-check of babies even though the Integrated Child Development Scheme (UCDS) calls for such provisions. These centres were not provided with medicine kits much against the ICDS guidelines.

ICDS guidelines envisaged that every AWC should be equipped with medicine kits for treatment of diarrhoea, de-worming, skin diseases, etc. In the absence of medicine kits, the AWC workers had to depend on the Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) workers.

The CAG report also detected deficiencies in referral health service of children.

Audit observed that out of the 223.05 lakh children in the State, 4.21 lakh children were identified as severely malnourished during 2011-16 and they were to be referred to appropriate hospitals for health care.

Audit further observed that out of the 4.21 lakh severely malnourished children in the State during 2011-16, only 1.96 lakh (46 per cent) children were referred to hospitals for treatment