World Population Day to be celebrated in Patna

Patna, Jul 10: Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Anbumani Ramadoss will review the progress of the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) in Bihar along with state Chief Minister Nitish Kumar tomorrow.

Dr Ramadoss will be visiting Bihar in connection with a function to celebrate World Population Day in Patna.

Later, he will visit Bodh Gaya on the invitation of the Chief Minister.

Bihar is one of the 18 high focus states to be covered under NRHM resulting in a manifold increase in the allocation for the health sector. Prior to this, Bihar was part of Empowered Action Group (EAG) states.

Bihar has shown significant improvement in outpatient load in government facilities, sterilisation cases, immunisation and institutional deliveries. The state has recruited 2,300 doctors, 4,504 Auxiliary Nurse Midwives and 2,900 staff nurses under the NRHM. Despite this, the state confronts issues of huge infrastructure and human resource gap and poor resource utilisation and extremely poor health indicators.

The total fertility rate of the state is 4.3. The infant mortality rate is 60 and maternal mortality ratio is 371 (SRS 2001-03), which are higher than the national average. The sex ratio in the state is 919 compared to 933 for the rest of the country.

AIIMS Patna is one of the six AIIMS like institutions being set up under the Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana (PMSSY).

The state government has made available the land for the institution and formalities for the construction have started.

UNI