HYDERABAD: Mother, child and infant mortality rates in Telangana have been brought down after the formation of a new State, Health Minister T Harish Rao said on Monday. Addressing the media after inaugurating a CT scan unit at Niloufer Hospital, he informed that the maternal mortality rate (MMR) had come down from 92 per cent to 63 per cent, while infant mortality rate (IFR) had dropped from 39 to 26 per cent, while mortality rate of children below five years old had reduced from 42 to 29 per cent. He also said that the percentage of deliveries in government hospitals in the past seven years had increased from 30 to 50 per cent.
Harish Rao instructed doctors to bring down the number of C-sections and to encourage normal deliveries, as per the WHO guidelines. He urged the HoDs and professors to attend to patients in OP wards. “To reduce mother, infant and child mortality rates in the State, the Chief Minister has introduced schemes like KCR Kit and Arogya Lakshmi, following which the delivery rates in government hospitals have increased,” the Minister said. Almost 98 per cent of the deliveries in the State are institutional deliveries, he added.
Harish Rao said the government was paying Rs 10 crore a year to Niloufer Hospital under the Arogyasri scheme and the Arogyasri package had also been enhanced from Rs 2 to 5 lakh per patient. He said the Union government’s health scheme of Ayushman Bharat had also been implemented in Telangana. He advised people to come forward for vaccinations to prevent spread of the Omicron variant, as it spreads rapidly and vaccination was the only option to avoid the virus.