Quality of Village Health & Nutrition Day (VHND) Sessions

TARGET GROUP: PREGNANT WOMEN

OBJECTIVES

·        To attain sustainable and reasonable success in maternal and child health outcomes.

·        To study the quality of VHND sessions.

SUMMARY

Globally, every year over 500,000 women die of pregnancy related causes and 99 percent of these occur in developing countries. India continues to contribute about a quarter of all global maternal deaths. The Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) in India is 254 per 100,000 live births. Only 47 per cent of women likely in India have an institutional delivery and 53 percent had their births assisted by a skilled birth attendant. As many as 49 % of pregnant women still do not have three antenatal visits during pregnancy. Only 46.6 percent of mothers receive iron and folic acid for at least 100 days during pregnancy. A large number of deaths are preventable through safe deliveries and adequate maternal care. More than half of all married women are anaemic and one-third of them are malnourished. A number of studies have been conducted on Fixed Nutrition and Health Day (FNHD) or Village Health and Nutrition Day (VHND), but a few studies have focused on quality issues. Over 58.7 lakh VHNDs were held in 2009-10 and 69.25 lakh during 2010-11 in India. In the year 2009-2010, 23962 no. of AWCs conducted VHND out of 90895 no. of AWCs (26.36% AWCs Covered) in Bengal. The Coverage Evaluation Survey 2009 shows important gains in infant feeding practices. For example, the rate of initiation of breastfeeding within one hour of birth increased from 25%9 to 34% nationally while that within one day of birth increased from 55% to 74% nationwide. Though now VHND services take place almost regularly, there is still long way to deliver truly convergent services and the knowledge of impact of all these services remains deficient. To address this problem, though 3rd Saturday convergent meeting, listing of drop-out beneficiaries and Block level MIES meeting are going on, still huge gaps exist in the area of VHND.

REFERENCE

www.iosrjournals.org/iosr-jdms/papers/Vol17-issue2/Version-2/C1702020811.pdf