Ambulance services for expectant mothers to ensure safe deliveries

To ensure safe institutional deliveries, Delhi government is working on providing ambulance services to pregnant women to reach hospitals. HT reports.

To ensure safe institutional deliveries, Delhi government is working on providing ambulance services to pregnant women to reach hospitals. Not just free transportation, the woman and her newborn would also be provided free medicines, treatment and blood, if required.

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Delhi health minister Ashok Kumar Walia said the government is soon going to implement the Janani Shishu Suraksha Yojana and pregnant women would get these facilities under the same scheme from August this year.

“This is being done to check maternal and infant mortality rate and promote institutional deliveries. Any woman in the Capital would be able to avail this facility. We are going to get 70 ambulances. The central government will fund the scheme under the National Rural Health Mission,” Walia said. The facility is currently available in Uttarakhand, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and other states.

Meanwhile, concerned about the dwindling sex ratio in the Capital, the government is working on a proposal to impose heavy penalty and hand out stricter punishment to people found involved in such crimes.

Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit said on Monday that her government was worried about an imbalance in the sex ratio.

“We would have to intensify our efforts to save the girl child… so that the ratio of girls and boys could be made even,” Dikshit said, after flagging off a walk at the India Gate lawns to mark World Population Day.

“It is essential to save the girl child at any cost,” said Dikshit.