Norway to cooperate India in improving maternal health: Envoy

New Delhi, Nov 13 (PTI) Norway would extend its fullcooperation to India in improving maternal and newborn childhealthcare as inequitable mortality...

New Delhi, Nov 13 (PTI) Norway would extend its fullcooperation to India in improving maternal and newborn childhealthcare as inequitable mortality across states in this areahere remains a challenge, its envoy said.

Observing that India's success in achieving sustainabledevelopment goals (SDG) has a huge impact on global goalachievement, Norwegian Ambsassador to India Nils RagnarKamsvag said that his country's cooperation will continue tofocus on global health issues of common interest.

"The main challenge in the field of maternal, newborn andchild health is that mortality continues to be inequitableacross states and districts.

"The data from the 2015-2016 national family healthsurvey demonstrates this clearly," he told PTI.

He also commended the Indian government's decision tofocus efforts on the 102 high priority districts that accountfor 86 per cent of total maternal and 70 per cent of totalchild deaths in the country.

Norway, he said, is a partner of the Indian government,and take the objectives, as outlined in the National HealthPolicy 2017 for achievement of sustainable development goals,as the common point of departure.

"More concretely, our future cooperation will focus onsupporting the government in the implementation of theDistrict Implementation Plan for Improving Maternal and ChildHealth Outcomes in India from September 2017," he said.

A letter of Intent was signed on the September 28 betweenthe Indian MInistry of Health and Family Welfare and Norway'sforeign affairs ministry through which both the nationsaffirmed to work together to improve reproductive, maternal,newborn, child and adolescent health in India.

Also, Norway India partnership Initiative (NIPI) designsand tests innovations, that, if found successful, are takenover and scaled up by the Indian government.

It also provides strategic and catalytic support to thestate and national health mission.

Kamsvag said he has visited Bihar, Odisha, MadhyaPradesh, Rajasthan and Jammu and Kashmir, the five stateswhere NIPI is working, in the last 12 months and these visitshave given him a variety of insights and experiences.

"The main success factor of NIPI is the fact that we haveprovided innovative, catalytic and strategic techno-managerialsupport to the government, based on the latter's own priorityareas.

"The future cooperation in health will continue to run onthis key strength, whilst also extending our cooperation toother global health areas of common interest," he said.

The envoy said both the countries are already workingtogether on health research projects, and are partners in theCoalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI).

"I believe that there is scope for even strongercollaboration," he said.

The Norwaygian Ambassador said he has been overwhelmed bythe sheer complexity of India, and the strides it is makingtowards improving its healthcare quotient.

"For a country 200 times more populated than Norway, andhaving distinctly different lifestyle cultures in each of itsstates, challenges are natural and inevitable," he said.

He however said that he was optimistic that the Indianleadership will continue to invest in better informationmanagement systems and effective cross sectoral workingbetween various departments to enhance the existing usefulnessof healthcare delivery provisions. PTI TDSDIP.

This is unedited, unformatted feed from the Press Trust of India wire.

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