Hyderabad: The State government’s ambitious citizens’ Health Profile scheme, a key component to further improve the healthcare system in the State, is all set for launch soon, initially in Mulugu and Rajanna Sircilla districts as a pilot project.
Announcing this, Municipal Administration and Urban Development Minister K T Rama Rao said on Thursday that the State Cabinet, at a recent meeting, had taken the decision to conduct a pilot project of the Health Profile scheme in Mulugu and Rajanna Sircilla districts.
The Minister was speaking at a meeting he held with Panchayat Raj Minister E Dayakar Rao, Women and Child Welfare Minister Satyavathi Rathod and other officials here. The meeting discussed the nitty-gritties and various measures to be taken for the implementation of the pilot project.
Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao had, in the past, strongly advocated health profiling of the entire population of the State that would facilitate availability of health data at the click of a mouse. “Health profile would be a very useful tool to tackle public health issues. It already exists in several developed countries. Once the profiling is done, every individual in the State would have a health card,” Chandrashekhar Rao had then said.
The health profiling programme, incidentally, would be redemption of one more promise made by the State government to the people, adding to its long list of welfare initiatives it has implemented in the past seven years.
Rama Rao said details pertaining to residents’ health in Mulugu and Rajanna Sircilla would be collected by health department officials from their doorsteps. The focus would be on collecting BP, sugar, urine and other blood test details at the field level, he said. In case additional details were required in specific cases, such persons would then be taken to the local Primary Health Care Centres or Telangana Diagnostic Centres for further tests, he said.
Stating that the required equipment and support staff would be provided to the PHCs, the Minister said once the health data of citizens in the State was available, it would facilitate effective implementation of welfare programmes taken up by different departments. This information would also be very crucial at times of accidents and emergency cases.
“Analysing the health profile of citizens and trends, we can identify district-specific seasonal and other diseases and initiate healthcare measures accordingly,” Rama Rao said, and instructed the officials to study the health profile exercise taken up in Estonia.
Dayakar Rao and Satyavathi Rathod welcomed the move to conduct a pilot project in Mulugu district. This would benefit the residents in many ways, especially those living in the fringe areas. The population of Girijans, the Ministers pointed out, was high in these areas and implementation of the health profile project would help in addressing their health issues in an effective manner.
Later, the officials gave a power point presentation on the proposed pilot project. After taking into consideration the suggestions given by the Ministers, they said a comprehensive report on the guidelines for execution of the project would be prepared and the same would be submitted in a week.