Mayuri Varkey

UM4000-2

Urban Health in Gandhinagar (Zone 2)

To effectively address the health concerns of the urban poor population, the National Health Mission (NMH) launch the National Urban Health Mission (NUHM) on 1st May 2013 to improve the health status of the urban population (particularly slum dwellers and other vulnerable sections) by facilitating their access to primary healthcare. The 4 Urban Public Health Centers (UPHCs)in sector 2, 24, 29, and Palaj in Gandhinagar cater primarily to maternal and child health care. UPHC 24 caters to a population of 74,000 and has 8 schemes implemented from which the Mamta Taruni Divas and the Mamta Divas have been described here. Issues such as lack of menstrual hygiene and use of menstrual products due to unawareness and unaffordability, as well as data entry errors due to lack of written skills and irregular data entry of medicines in the stock register due to time crunches, have been observed for which appropriate short term and long term proposals are developed and the respective cost areas explored. 


Report Content

The main aim of the health center is maternal and child care. UPHC 24 caters to a population of 74,000 and has 8 schemes implemented from which the Mamta Taruni Divas and the Mamta Divas have been studied in detail

Surveys done for Mamta Taruni Divas show the lack of awareness of menstrual hygiene counselling and hence the lack of usage of sanitary napkins which lead to major health issues among women

Thus, a communication plan to spread awareness of menstrual hygiene is created

To make sanitary pads available and affordable to all women, 4 NGOs were surveyed and an implementation plan for the best choice is developed

The Mamta Abhiyan-the prime scheme catering to maternal care and child immunization shows errors in the manual data recording process of the ASHA workers.

Thus, for ease of use and understanding a card with stickers printed on it and health ID for online verification is developed for the ASHA workers

A 1month induction training plan to help the ASHA workers understand the proposal and its implementation is created and scope of improvement is observed in the recruitment process for hiring candidates with written communicaion skills

In the health center, the pharmacist maintains a manual stock register. Though medicines are given to patients on a daily basis, data entry is done once a month due to staff and time crunches

So, an initial proposal for regular data entry in excel sheets by the computer operator and a long term proposal of having a wireless barcode scanner system is proposed

Lastly, the main cost areas of all the proposals have been explored