Haryana launched Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine (PCV) and ANMOL App

Haryana Health Minister Anil Vij launched Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine and ANMOL – ANM Online Application for the good health of children in the state.

Facts :

• Haryana is the first state to include Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine (PCV) in its immunization schedule from state budget as Atal Jeevan Rakshak Teeka karan Yojana under Swarn Jayanti Yojana.
• Anil Vij launched a tab with custom-made software ANMOL (ANM Online) that will enable Auxiliary Nurse Midwives (ANMs) to go paperless while recording healthcare statistics and other records of patients.
• The Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine would keep children safe from pneumonia and ANMOL - ANM Online Application would keep all their data online.
• The application and tab would facilitate ANMs to maintain patient data in digital format. It would automatically be backed up in a central server.
• With the help of the tablet, ANMs would be able to upload the complete record of pregnant women and immunization record of children on RCH portal, which would also ensure updation of this from time to time.
• In the first phase, 2,735 tabs would be distributed to ANMs in nine districts Ambala, Gurugram, Jind, Hisar, Kaithal, Karnal, Palwal, Sirsa and Mahendragarh and in 2nd phase ANMOL application will be implemented and roll out in remaining 13 districts of the state.
• Approximately 600 ANMs will be provided ANMOL tablets in all 22 districts of Haryana.
• PCV is a costly vaccine , already available in the market and it costs around 3-4 thousand per dose and 10-12 thousand for vaccinating a child, as each child need two doses and one booster at the age of 6 weeks, 14 weeks and 9 months. It will be provided free of cost to all, with all other vaccines under Universal Immunization programme.
• ANMOL is an online system through which ANMs of the state are being digitalized for the first time. For this, doctors, officers of the Health Department and ANMs have also been imparted training.
• The State Government would soon provide Smartphone to all ASHA workers to keep all activities of the department online.

Analysis :

• Every year, 40,000 children suffer from pneumonia. To save the children from disease, the state government would provide the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine free of cost at the government hospitals in the state.
• The Aadhaar-enabled ANMOL would aim at bringing better healthcare services at the village level to pregnant women, mothers and newborns in the state.
• The application would end repetitive processes for ANMs by making their work paperless and proper training had been provided to them.
• In order to provide people with excellent healthcare, 400 Wellness Centres would be opened and in the first phase, 200 Wellness Centres would be completed.
• Apart from this, Cath Lab facility is also being given in four districts of the state and facility of Dialysis and MRI, CT-Scan is also being provided in about 12 hospitals.
• For the first time, 100-bedded Mother and Child Health Care center would be opened in districts Panchkula, Panipat and Hisar. Each centre would be constructed at the cost of about Rs 20 crore.
• Apart from this, DNB course has been started to overcome the shortage of doctors in the state.The proposal is under consideration to make it mandatory for doctors, who are doing MBBS from government medical colleges, to serve in government hospitals of the state for minimum one year.
• Under the great leadership and expert guidance of Narendra Modi, Haryana is leading towards in the direction of fulfilling the dram of landmark achievement by the state in this direction of equip all ANMs with ANMOL tablets.

Auxiliary Nurse Midwives (ANMs) :

• There are about 293,000 Auxiliary Nurse Midwives (ANMs), village-level female health workers in India, who are the first contact persons between the community and the health services in India.
• An ANM caters to a population of 3,000-5,000 and her work primarily involves providing primary health services around maternal and child health, family planning, nutrition and immunisation programmes.
• Collecting health care data is an extremely important part of their job and an ANM captures around 200 key indicators related to health, nutrition and immunisation of pregnant women, mothers and new born children in their hard-bound paper registers.
• An ANM handles more than one village, and on an average, carries 12-15 separate registers to record key data indicators to provide information to her supervisors while on the go.

ANMOL – Making ANMs Online :

• Taking into account the issues faced by ANMs and to improve the overall standards of child and maternal health service provision in India and related data collection, the ministry of health and family welfare, government of India, with support from UNICEF, has introduced an android based tablet based application ANMOL.
• ANMOL or ANM Online is a solution that aims to bring better healthcare services to millions of pregnant women, mothers and newborns in India.
  Since it is a completely digitalized process, the high quality of the data and accountability is maintained.
• All of the data that ANMs put into the tablets gets updated automatically in the central server. In the event of an internet outage, the tablets will work in offline mode, saving all of the data until internet connectivity is reestablished.
• The application aims at bringing awareness to the remotest populations, underserved communities and urban slums and through images and videos, and educating them about initiatives on health, maintenance of good hygiene, basic health care and precautions.
• In addition to data collection, the tablets have a number of other key functions. They complement ANMs’ roles as counselors by providing readily available information about newborns, pregnant women and mothers in their areas.
• ANMs can also use pre-loaded audio and video files on ANMOL to counsel women and couples on subjects like high-risk pregnancies, immunization and family planning. The tablets maintain an auto-generated list of pending tasks as well.
   

By: Harman Sandhu