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| Power shortage, faulty internet hampers project implementation | | Health Deptt fails to track mother, child under NRHM | | Early Times Report
JAMMU, Jan 12: The Jammu and Kashmir Health Department's ambitious project aimed at tracking the services provided to pregnant women and children during respective antenatal and immunization periods has proved a damp squib, with the department failing to upload and update the information on the online web server of the Union Health Ministry. According to sources, on account of non-availability of sufficient manpower and infrastructure to cater to such a colossal project, the department has resorted to coercing the Program Managers and Monitoring Officers engaged under NRHM into working as Data Entry Operators, asking them to upload the data on the internet based Mother & Child Tracking System (MCTS).
Although, the officials have been able to register most expectant mothers and new born children on the online system, but find it almost impossible to update the data of services provided to the clients as it registers an increase with every passing day.
"New pregnant women are registered for Antenatal Checkups every day and updating the services provided keep accruing for 9 to 10 months until they get their post-natal treatment.
Since there is only one officer for monitoring and evaluation of NRHM in every block, it becomes impossible for him to register/ track thousands of women and upload their data on the internet continuously", said one Program Manager wishing anonymity.
In case of tracking immunization of every single child, the task is even more daunting, as every child needs to be tracked up to 16 years of age. With scores of children being registered every day, the number will run into lakhs at one point of time and it would be unthinkable to track them without sufficient workforce and other facilities, he adds.
Woes of these officers and managers don't stop there, as issues like availability of computers, internet connectivity and uninterrupted power supply are still proving to be a distant dream in most of the rural and remote areas. "We do not have electricity for the computers. We have to wait for electricity for hours together, which rarely becomes available", said one of the managers. The authorities are helpless in providing internet connectivity to the managers in absence of such services in far flung areas. "In most of the rural areas especially the far flung areas of Doda, Kishtwar, Rajouri, Poonch, Kupwara, Bandipora, Kargil and Leh, there is no internet connectivity available. And if at all it becomes available, the connectivity is very poor", says one of the officials wishing anonymity.
"They are not ready to listen to any logic. They just want us to get the job done without provided the tools needed for the job. This is coercion and exploitation of educated youth at its worst", said an agitated Monitoring Officer.
MCTS, a web based application developed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) is of no help either to these aggrieved young managers. "The application crashes time and again throwing errors and exceptions every now and then. It is extremely time consuming and lacks even one bit of robustness", said a manager who looks after the technical aspect of the project. He said the NIC servers usually remain down for days especially on holidays, which makes it impossible for the officials to update the data.
The MCTS project, which is a huge task in itself, has been imposed upon these managers in addition to their already assigned jobs of managing and monitoring the NRHM programme. "Conducting camps and workshops, holding meetings, dealing with public, ASHSAs, ANMs, doctors and tackling so many other day to day issues of the mission was our primary job. We also submit information to the higher authorities on daily and monthly basis apart from handling the department's health monitoring and Information System (HMIS). Rather than appointing operators to enter the data, the department is coercing us to do the job", a group of the managers told ET.
Even some senior officers in the department are skeptical about the usefulness of the project itself. "What is the fun of uploading and updating records of women who have already delivered and are immunizing their children? The main aim of the project was to track those women and children who may drop out and for that the data relating to them should be available at the point where service is provided. Similarly the data should get updated at that very point to make it current and relevant. The department is only interested in showing numbers and statistics to the Union Health Ministry", said a senior Officer on the conditions of anonymity fearing reprisal. This is useless and disgusting on part of the higher authorities to waste the talent of bright managers who are otherwise extremely useful to the department with their knowledge and skills, he adds.
To top it up, the department has not even tried to assess the human and material resources required for the project. "We wanted to know what assessment has been done to find out how many women and children can be tracked at one data entry point, but there is none. Some officers have to enter data of a population of 3 lakh while as some have just to cater to 30 thousand. There is no uniformity either which shows the extent of non-professionalism among the higher officers both in the Health Department and the NIC", the group added.
They demanded that manpower should be provided at respective PHCs and CHCs for uploading data of their subordinate institutions. "Providing tablet computers to ANMs would have been even more helpful as it would have served the actual purpose of tracking at the source of immunization and antenatal services", they said adding there is no dearth of funds for buying laptops and tablet computers in the health facilities where lakhs of rupees are lying unspent. |
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