Minister for Health and Family Welfare Dinesh Gundu Rao launched a Social Awareness and Action to Neutralise Pneumonia Successfully (SAANS) campaign, an initiative to set up four more mother’s milk banks and comprehensive lactation management centres (CLMC) at a programme in Belagavi on Wednesday.
Participating in the launch programme, the Minister also inaugurated a mother’s milk bank set up at the Belagavi Institute of Medical Sciences (BIMS).
Mr. Gundu Rao said that milk banks played a crucial role in promoting breastfeeding and ensuring that premature and sick infants receive adequate nutrition. He also stressed the need for proper awareness in reducing infant mortalilty.
The SAANS campaign is aimed at reducing mortality due to childhood pneumonia to less than three per 1,000 live births by 2025.
Under the campaign, Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) will screen children under the age of five for pneumonia symptoms and counsel mothers on the importance of breastfeeding and the danger signs of pneumonia.
Senior officials of the Department of Health and Family Welfare, health staff and ASHAs were present during the launch.
According to Deputy Director of Child Health, Directorate of Health and Family Welfare, Basavaraj B. Dhabadi, the plan for 2023-24 is to train ASHAs/PHCOs in home-based care giving for young children, establish four new comprehensive lactation management centres, strengthen child death surveillance and response mechanism and launch and implement neonatal ambulance services in four Revenue divisions of the State, while taking up other related initiatives.
