BENGALURU: The Enhancing Maternal and Child Health Services (EMCH) Programme, which was started three years ago, has benefitted over 1,00,000 mothers and newborns in the state. The programme was started in 2016 by the Singapore International Foundation (SIF) in partnership with SingHealth and the State Institute of Health and Family Welfare (SIHFW). Doctors from SIF trained doctors from 26 districts in the state to reduce the Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) and Infant Mortality Rate (IMR).
Dr Rajkumar N, Deputy Director (Maternal Health), Department of Health and Family Welfare, said, “Through the programme, we have been able to address gaps in antenatal care and have made improvements in our journey to providing better services to our citizens.” Among the 180 trained healthcare professionals, 31 master trainers were identified and they were trained on how to teach their peers.
Principal Secretary of the department, Jawaid Akhtar said, “The global goal is to bring the MMR to 70 per 100,000 live births and IMR to 12 per 1000 live births. In India, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has set goals of achieving an MMR of 100 by 2020 and IMR of 28 by 2019. Karnataka’s commitment to improving the reproductive and child healthcare systems has helped surpass these goals with an MMR of 703 and IMR of 254 and respectively.”
SIF’s Executive Director Jean Tan said, “The EMCH Programme brought together the medical communities of Singapore and Karnataka to help raise standards of maternal and child healthcare in Karnataka, which has benefitted 1,00,000 pregnant mothers and newborns.”