KCR Kits: Financial assistance to pregnant women denied

Rs.12,000 was provided if women gave birth to a baby boy and Rs.13,000 for a baby girl.

Karimnagar: Cosmetic items, and not nutrition items or financial assistance, appear to be the only component of the Mother and Child protection kit (KCR Kits) scheme these days. That too, if the kits are given.

According to official sources, pregnant women and lactating mothers in the erstwhile Karimnagar district are not anymore being provided financial assistance under the scheme. Even the nutrition kits that were part of the scheme are not being given since the last few months. Instead, Medical and Health officials are washing off their hands by providing only the cosmetics items in the kits to the women. any of the women are not getting even these with officials saying there was no stock of the kits. And this has affected the number of government institutional deliveries, which had helped the State bring down the maternal and infant mortality rates.

---

The aim of the scheme, which was introduced by former Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao to put an end to extortion by private nursing homes by encouraging normal deliveries and institutional deliveries in government hospitals, seems to have been sidetracked. The previous BRS government had introduced the KCR kits scheme in June 2017. Besides 16 types of cosmetics such as baby soaps, oil, powder, shampoo and others, financial assistance was also provided in four installments. Rs.12,000 was provided if women gave birth to a baby boy and Rs.13,000 for a baby girl.

At the same time, nutrition kits would also be provided in two phases to provide nutritious food to both the mother and child. While the first kit would be supplied before the fifth month of pregnancy, the second kit would be provided in between the seventh and ninth months. However, except cosmetics, the financial assistance and nutrition kits are not being given currently.

This has had a negative outcome already, with a majority of pregnant women, who earlier used to visit government hospitals for treatment, now returning to the private hospitals. Huzurabad MLA Padi Kaushik Reddy had raised the issue during a recent Zilla Parishad meeting.

The official figures substantiate this. Only 2,400 women have approached various government hospitals in Jagtial district for delivery from January to July this year as against the 10,636 pregnant women who had registered themselves with government hospitals in the district. In Karimnagar, 4,800 women gave birth to babies in government hospitals as against 7,275 pregnant women who registered themselves. In Peddapalli, against a registered number of 3,108 pregnant women, only 1,353 women delivered their babies in government hospitals. In Rajanna-Sircilla, only 2,156 women approached government hospitals for delivery as against the 7,138 who had registered themselves.