In a first-of-its-kind initiative which could guide the Telangana government’s health policies, complete data on the health status of people suffering from illnesses and reasons for deaths is being collated by the State health department.
Titled ‘Village Health Profile’, it has details on pregnancies, the number of still births, dynamic data on the number of girls and boys, the reasons for death of a person, diseases that a person is suffering from and others. Apart from the basic details of the people, information on disabilities, if any, has also been collected. Barring Hyderabad, the data from 11,797 villages in the remaining 32 districts of the State is being collated by the officials.
The crucial data is expected to help the government in taking key decisions like which disease to be treated on priority basis while framing policies or allocating budget.
Since information on age, sex and region is also being collected in the process, the officials can know if a particular disease is affecting a certain age group, sex, or region. For instance, if a particular locality has more number of hypertensive patients, it would be treated on a priority basis. “Prominent studies and reports that mention the disease burden of a place consider a sample size of a few thousands or lakhs. A disease burden in an area, across age groups, can be easily known through this information. For instance, we can select one sub-centre and know which disease is the most reported from there,” said an official from the Telangana health department. It is learnt that this is the first time deaths audit reports are being collated.
A few States in India collect data on births and deaths. However, the officials said, this is first time where all the data is being collated, and disease burden and reasons for deaths is being mapped.
The officials from the State health department said the data collection drive under ‘Village Health Profile’ was initiated in November 2018.
“The first two months were dedicated to cleansing the data: people who were dead were deleted from the list and those who were born were added. Around 43 lakh names were deleted and nine lakh were added. From January, Auxiliary Nursing Midwives (ANM) started collecting data on pregnancies, births and deaths,” an official said.
Since ANMs and Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) provide medical services to pregnant women, infants and children and those who are ill, they have been tasked to collect the data. The ANMs have to upload the information by fifth of every month. Also, private hospitals have been directed to send information on pregnancies and deaths during deliveries.
Tentative plans have been made to integrate information from Aarogyasri Health Scheme, Kanti Velugu and other programmes.