Telangana on ‘healthy’ track; records massive improvement in MMR, IMR

Hyderabad: In the last few years, due to sustained efforts at improving Mother and Child Health (MCH), Telangana State has recorded a significant improvement in vital health care parameters like Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) and Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR). While the recent death of the four young women after a sterilisation camp in CHC Ibrahimpatnam […]

Hyderabad: In the last few years, due to sustained efforts at improving Mother and Child Health (MCH), Telangana State has recorded a significant improvement in vital health care parameters like Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) and Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR). While the recent death of the four young women after a sterilisation camp in CHC Ibrahimpatnam has highlighted the inherent challenges in family planning initiatives, the fact also remains that in the last eight years, the MMR in Telangana has consistently dropped, which means lives of more young mothers have been saved due to quality health care.

Back in 2014, the MMR was at around 91 deaths for 1, 00, 000 live births, which has now gone down to 56 while the IMR in 2014 was 40 infant deaths for 1, 000 live births and by 2022, it has dropped to 23.
The improvement in IMR and MMR has taken-place due to a series of measures including decision to launch new MCH and ICU centres and launch KCR Kits scheme along with the financial benefits for pregnant women, which has went a long way in improving institutional deliveries in Telangana.

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More MCH centres

In the next few months, two-major Mother and Child Health (MCH) centres in Hyderabad with over 200 beds capacity will be added. A 100-bedded ICU facility for MCH is being constructed with a cost of Rs. 55 crore is getting ready at Gandhi Hospital, Secunderabad while a similar facility with nearly 200-beds will come-up at NIMS.

In the last five years, the authorities have set-up 9 MCH centres, each with 150 beds with a cost of close to Rs 90 crore. The budget to start construction of the MCH facility at Gandhi Hospital has already received its approval in the recent budget. The authorities have also developed 20 Intensive Care Units (ICUs) with each unit having ten beds a cost of close to Rs. 30 crore.

KCR Kits

Within months of launching KCR Kits, small and medium nursing homes for pregnant women, not only in Hyderabad but across the State, started reporting drop in patient admissions. In the next few years, the percentage of pregnant women at government hospitals, which was around 30 percent, sharply increased to 60 percent, resulting in rise of institutional deliveries to 95 percent.