PINAKI MAJUMDAR
Jamshedpur, June 26: A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between the district officials of Gumla and Tata Steel Foundation today for implementing their public health initiative – Mansi (Maternal and Newborn Survival Initiative).
Sushant Gaurav, deputy commissioner, Gumla and Sourav Roy, Chief Executive Officer, Tata Steel Foundation signed the MoU to initiate the implementation process.
As per the agreement, Tata Steel Foundation will introduce the project in Gumla and work at reducing preventable maternal, neonatal, infant and child mortality rates by 50 per cent over next 5 years.
The project will cover all of 12 blocks of Gumla, having a rural population of more than 96000, spread across 159 panchayats of 948 villages and more than 18 lakh households.
The Mansi project will be implemented through 1623 village healthcare worker of Sahiyas, duly monitored by 103 Sahiya Sathi and 1660 anganwadi workers, anchored through 12 community health centres in the district of Gumla.
Having completed a decade of practice, Mansi would provide a lifecycle-based approach in the district.
Being an established model serving the communities of Jharkhand in PPP mode, it is a project that stands by women and families in their most personal hour and the Foundation endeavours to ensure that each cycle of pregnancy becomes a memorable story for the families.
In keeping with the Foundation’s intent to take the best of healthcare across the state of Jharkhand, this was extended to Gumla in a PPP mode.
Gumla district currently is home to more than 90,000 adolescents, more than 2.26 lakh pregnant and lactating women children and more than 1 lakh children.
The district is situated in one of the remotest corners of Jharkhand with little or no accessibility to proper healthcare facilities.
The activation of the project, which includes adolescent health and nutritional aspects, will equip the district to address high-risk pregnancies, and therefore address one of the core development gaps in healthcare in the country.
Speaking on the occasion, Sushant Gaurav, said, “We appreciate the approach towards outcome-based thinking of Tata Steel Foundation. The district officials, along with the Foundation are working for the same cause. It is imperative that we understand the purpose, the process and the people. We will enable all administrative systems to enable a seamless operating ecosystem for the project.”
The MoU comes at a time when the Tata Steel Foundation is amplifying its efforts to engage in collaborations to extend and augment public health facilities across and beyond operational areas across Jharkhand and Odisha.
Mansi’s proven success in reducing infant and maternal mortality rate during childbirth makes it an ideal development model for replication nationwide, and that is what the Foundation is aiming to achieve.
