Pragati Shukla - Alumni of MBA Rural Management, Brings Laurel to the IIHMR University

Children face humiliation at schools if their mother has gone to another man under an ancient practice called Nata Pratha, and most of them do not have friends to share their feelings with, a study by an NGO in south Rajasthan, has found.

The study – which was released at a state-level consultation on “ensuring protecting rights of tribal children in Rajasthan” – said 13% of children face humiliation at schools because of Nata in their family, 6% of them face verbal and physical abuse.

Twenty-two percentage of children reported that they see violence in families in daily life after Nata relation, the study found.

The study was conducted by Vaagdhara and Unicef in 18 villages of two blocks – Aspur and Sabla – of Dungarpur district.

Pragati Shukla of Vaagdhara, while presenting findings of the study, said two kinds of Nata persist in the tribal society. The first is when the husband dies and woman move with some other man either on her own will or with the consent of the society, and the second is when a woman moves with other man even though her husband is alive.

In both the cases, women leave their children behind as their new husband is not willing to accept children from her first husband.

“This causes multiple vulnerabilities to children who are forced to live with their grandparents or other relatives,” she said.

Reasons for Nata are early death of spouse, domestic violence against women, when a man brings other women into the house even when he is already married or forces the woman to leave the husband as he want some other woman in his life. This apart, divorce, low economic condition of the husband or when he is not able to satisfy or fulfill the needs of his wife and modernization of society and prevalence of mobile and television are among the other reasons for Nata, the study conducted on 84 men, 91 women and 79 children, found.

Director of social justice and empowerment department Ravi Jain, said that Palanhaar Yojana, a scheme to provide Rs 1,000 every month to a guardian of children whose mother goes to another man, proved useful in providing financial support to the affected children.

The government needs to work on other aspects too – such as emotional and skill development – for holistic development of children, he said.

Rajasthan state commissioner for protection of child rights chairperson Manan Chaturvidi shared her experiences with such children at the consultation and promised to forward recommendations of the study to the government for policy interventions.

Recrutiment for HEALTH POLICY RESEARCH PROFESSIONALS

Centre for Health Research and Development, Society for Applied Studies

South West Delhi, Delhi, India

Job description

CHRD-SAS INVITES RESUMES FROM HEALTH POLICY RESEARCH PROFESSIONALS

 

Qualification

• MD (Community Medicine, Pediatrics or relevant discipline) or PhD (Public Health, Nutrition or relevant discipline) or PhD (Bio-statistics, population Science) with 3-4 years’ experience in a program or academic setting or senior residency

 

Skills

• Demonstrated writing skills with an ability to contribute to writing background documents, academic papers and presentations

• Experience in secondary data analysis especially National level survey data

• Experience and ability to conduct systematic reviews

• Experience in and demonstrated ability to coordinate and implement knowledge intensive policy focused programs; intellectual curiosity

• Excellent communication skills- written and verbal

• Enjoys both working independently and collaboratively in a small collegial team environment; strong interpersonal relationship skills

• Has an in-depth technical and operational knowledge of maternal and child nutrition in Indian perspective, health policies and national health programs, especially those relevant to nutrition

• Understanding of inter-sectoral coordination between various health departments at the central/state/district level for program implementation

• Committed to time bound, quality productivity based on set targets and milestones

 

Salary

• Negotiable

 

Please mail your resume within 10 days to knit@sas.org.in

Address Social Indicators For The Development Of The Status of Girl Child says IIHMR University This National Girl Child Day

Jaipur, 23^rd January, 2017: With the rise in government taking measures to secure the future and health of the girl child across the nation, there are multiple reasons why there still exist some inequities in the growth and development of girl children. Some of the major inequities are primarily due to differential care amongst male and female child, gender inequality exists also due to sex selective abortions and neglecting the female child post birth thus putting them to the risk of malnourishment and retardation of growth. IIHMR University Jaipur creates awareness this World Girl Child Health Day.  

Dr. Goutam Sadhu, Dean In-Charge, School of Rural Management said, “According to a report on ‘Journey of a Girl Child in India During Health Disease’, and as per the Indian Census 2001, the ratio of girls to boys was  927 girls  per 1000 boys for the age group between 0-6 years, which has reduced to 914 girls  per 1000 boys  in 2011 for the similar age group. As per the report on Working Group on Child Rights for 12th Five Year Plan 2012-2017, the Child Mortality (under 5 mortality rate) for boys is 60 per 1000 births, whereas the child mortality for girls is 69 per 1000 births. The report also highlights Anaemia amongst the adolescents between the age group of 15-19 year. It is seen that only 30% of the boys are Anaemic, whereas, 56% of the girls from the same age group suffer from Anaemia. While one speaks on immunization for girls and boys in the age group of 12-23 months, only 52% girls are immunized whereas about 55% boys are fully immunized creating discrimination amongst health priorities and treatments given to boys as against the girls.”

Dr. Goutam also added, “As per report on Working Group on Child Rights for 12th Five Year Plan 2012-2017, more than 1/3^rd i.e 35.6% women who have a Body Mass Index less than 18.5 kg/m are undernourished. With this proportion the figure of the undernourished adolescent girls between the age group of 11 to 18 years would come to be about 2.95 crore which is 35.6% of 8.3 crore). According to WHO report which was published in the past, about shows that as many as 44.7 percent of girls aged between 15 to 18 have low Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). There have been cases of malnutrition which could be a result of an early marriage, such cases can be pointed out where 30% of the women between the age group of 20-24 are married before the age of 18 years.” 

Dr. Goutam Sadhu also added, “According to NFHS3, 33% of the women who are married between the age of 15-49 years are too undernourished while 58.7% of pregnant women are anaemic. Also, the girls who are less than 20 years of age are at 50% more risk to deliver children who are undernourished and with lower weight at birth.”

Thus one needs to address many social indicators that can lead to the overall development of the status of the girl child such as reducing the gender gap and differentiation after birth, empowering the girl child to take decisions and reduce the lack of inclusiveness, effective literacy and equity amongst the girl child and the boy child to receive health treatments, reducing biases against a girl child, protection and entitlement of the rights for the girls, developing systems and programmes that relate to the survival and nourishment of the girl child and many more. 

The ministries of the Government of India have come up with various schemes from time to time. These schemes could be either Central, state specific or collaboration between the Centre and the states. There are more than 20 programme are running at central and state level for welfare of child in India. Even though there are some land mark achieve in this regard but overall execution is in question. Government needs to understand simply increasing number of programme will not solve the problem; there is requirement of proper implementation in most efficient manner.

IIHMR university working in context of child welfare from last 30 years. It has mainly worked in areas of health, water, nutrition, and sanitation facilitates to be provided to children not only in Rajasthan but also in many states in India. There has more than 500 projects implemented across the country which has led to better living standard and eventual welfare of children.

It is well recognized, that these programmes when provided adequately, could significantly improve the health and nutritional status of children. In view of this, a need has been felt to extend the coverage of the schemes with content enrichment, strengthen aimed at empowerment & enhanced self-perception and bring about convergence with other programmes of similar nature of education, rural development, employment and health sectors.

Hospitals can reduce treatment expense by 50% by adopting blockchain technology & IoT

Digitization driven primarily by blockchain technology and Internet of Things (IoT) will prove to be a catalyst in transforming the healthcare industry that is ripe for innovation. The use of the digital technologies will bring down healthcare industry's treatment expenditure by 50 per cent by 2020 from existing 70 per cent.

Blockchain, a peer to peer distributed ledger technology for a new generation of transactional application, enables hospitals to decrease the cost of audits and compliance, reduce compliance risk by ensuring increased transparency in claims activities, put in place tamper-proof audit trails, and enhance patient data security. This will help healthcare facilities improve patient care and make greater profits, said Dr Sandeep Narula, professor at IIHMR University, Jaipur .

Blockchain technology having features like decentralization of control, high availability, and data integrity through end-to-end encryption, facilitates safe data exchange and transactions across the healthcare sector, encouraging precise diagnosis and improved care at low costs, while fostering greater revenue cycle management, he said.

IoT is primarily sensor devices, through cloud computing people are using this technology. It gives medical devices ability to store and share crucial information through the use of data-capturing sensors and radio-frequency identification (RFID).

“With the help of IoT, a person’s data is collected throughout the care pathway which helps diagnose the patient so they can receive the best treatment at the earliest. It enables people to lead better lives by using connected devices viz. tablets, wearables and hand-held devices,”

said Dr Narula.

The data that could be taken from a network of IoT devices will also be able to significantly lower margins of error. It could be able to detect several health issues, from high blood pressure to early signs of delirium thereby lowering emergency hospitalisation. By embedding IoT-enabled devices in medical device, doctors will be able to monitor patients more effectively – and use the data collected from the devices to determine who needs the most hands-on attention, he added.

Blockchain plays a massive role in the IoT by enhancing security, enabling incorporation of devices to be viable. It enables IoT devices to take part in transactions.

There is a rise in volume of patient data handled by hospitals, doctors, and insurance companies annually. Patient data comprises electronic health records, health information exchanges, data collected from monitoring systems and IoT devices, medical insurance claims. Blockchain technology helps verify the integrity of patient data shared between organizations, prove the integrity of data collected in clinical trials.

The technology is helpful when new drugs, innovation are launched. Misuse of drugs and overuse of drugs, insurance can be tackled through block chain technology. It brings transparency.

Now we are moving from healthcare to wellness market. IoT and blockchain will play crucial role towards this. For healthcare industry 70 per cent expenditure occurs on treatment. By 2020 we expect treatment cost will be reduced to 50 per cent from 70 per cent. Preventive care will increase to 12 per cent by 2020 from existing 5 per cent. Diagnostics will rise from 15 per cent to 21 per cent. Monitoring will grow to 25 per cent from 7-8 per cent. There will be millions of healthcare monitoring devices using IoT. Today data storage costs USD 40,000 a month. It will be come down USD 4 a month by 2020 because of cloud computing. When patients are not well, signals can be transmitted to doctors who rush to patients immediately and timely treatment is assured to patients. It will reduce treatment cost dramatically, he concluded.

                                                                               The article is authored by Dr. Sandeep Narula,

                                                                           Associate Professor at the IIHMR University

                                                                             You can reach him on: -sandeep@iihmr.edu.in