First step to register pregnancy

The project will be used to prepare a database of pregnancies and keep a track on the number of pregnancies that ultimately result in childbirth, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Jul 14, 2007, 01:36:50 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Share via

Copy link

The Union Health Ministry and Women and Child Development Ministry will start registering pregnancies in 10 blocks shortly, the government said on Friday.

The project — a first of its type which received flak from many women’s organisations — will be used to prepare a database of pregnancies and keep a track on the number of pregnancies that ultimately result in childbirth.

The government expects that by October 2007, the pilot project will be implemented in 10 blocks with a high child malnutrition rate and skewed sex ratio.

The government is in the process of finalising the 10 blocks. Women and Child Development Minister Renuka Chowdhury said that the idea is to ensure pregnant women get nutritional and immunisation support. “Simultaneously, we will come to know how many of the pregnancies actually mature into births,” she said.

The detailed database thus formed will help in singling out the issues involved in certain pregnancies that do not result in births, and the ministry would then take up the matter with the ministry or department concerned, an official said.

Health minister Anbumani Ramadoss said the 6.20 lakh women workers being trained under the National Rural Health Scheme (NRHS) would be utilised in implementing the project. The WCD ministry will also implement a new scheme for girl children in these 10 blocks. Under the scheme, the girl child will get over Rs 7,000 and an insurance cover of Rs one lakh immediately after birth.

Thereafter, the government will pay for her immunisation charges and education expenses till she clears her class X examinations. And after she is 18 years old, the government will give another small amount to make her financially stable.

“All we are waiting for is an approval from the Finance Ministry. The government has already allocated Rs 15 crore for the scheme in this year’s budget,” an official said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

Check India news real-time updates, latest news on Hindustan Times and more across India.