Health Minister N.Md. Farooq and Special Chief Secretary Poonam Malakondaiah took stock of the ongoing health programmes with the district medical and health officers, district coordinators of health services and government hospital superintendents at the Secretariat on Thursday. They laid emphasis on reducing the maternal and infant mortality rates and controlling seasonal diseases.

Mr. Farooq called for a concerted effort to bring down the MMR to 50 and IMR to eight. He instructed the officials to ensure that birth planning was done for all pregnant women and advanced planning for the delivery of high-risk pregnant women to avoid last-minute referral of emergency cases. Pregnant women have to be identified in the first trimester to get monthly check-ups done by the medical officers of Chandranna Sanchara Chikitsa in rural areas and CM health centres in the urban areas.

The Minister said 100% immunisation of children aged between 0 and 5 years, 100% antenatal visits and 100% home-based newborn care visits (post-natal visits plus newborn visits) were to be accomplished.

He said seasonal diseases like swine flu, dengue and malaria were to be dealt with effectively and new TB and leprosy cases identified and old ones followed up.

Under the tuberculosis control programme, good results were being achieved with the help of reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction technology, the Minister added.