Jan 25, 2003 07:26 AM
3674 Views
(Updated Jan 25, 2003 07:38 AM)
The Ministry of Health & Family Welfare is a very important Ministry of the Government of India, dealing with health and family welfare issues, besides being concerned with prevention of food adulteration and drug control. Family Planning is renamed as Family Welfare, and rightly so. There is a Secretary in the Ministry ,supported by two Additional Secretaries - one for health and the other for family welfare. My friend Rami Chhabra was the Additional Secretary for Family Welfare when Rajiv Gandhi was the Prime Minister. Rabi Ray, former Lok Sabha Speaker, was for some time the Health & Family Welfare Minister. The first Health Minister of independent India was Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, in Nehru's Cabinet.
The Ministry is supported by the Central Health Education Bureau, which has facilities for production of all sorts of publicity materials. There is the National Institute of Health and Family Welfare, in Munirka, New Delhi, which organises regular courses in conventional and distance education modes for the officers of the State Health and Family Welfare Departments.For quite some time I was on its Board of Governors. The Voluntary Health Association of India and its State Chapters do advocacy services in the areas of Information, Education and Communication. Actually, it should be Information, Communication and Education, because Education comes last in the chain of behavioral change. The Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, has a teaching department on Health.
I was attached to the National Aids Control Organisation, (NACO), New Delhi, as a Communication Adviser, and was helping the Ministry in identifying suitable Advertising Agencies for carrying on publicity activities in different States. It was a very valuable experience. Some of the Ad Agencies were equating Orissa with the North East in matters of culture and social habits.
I was also attached to the World Health Organisation (WHO) office in New Delhi, and had designed teaching-learning materials on HIV and Aids. In the WHO Conference held at Suraj Kund in 1992, the materials were approved for wider use in Southeast Asia after necessary adaption.
The barefoot doctors and village midwives are to be trained, because the ground realities today are that these are the functionaries available in Indian villages. Moreover, the book 'Where There is no Doctor' by David Werner should be translated in different languages for use by medical and paramedical personnel. It has been translated into Swahili for East Africa. The State Voluntary Health Association, Orissa, has brought out an Oriya edition. Homoeopathy, Aurveda and Unani systems of medicine should be practised along with allopathic medicines.
We should have Health Cooperatives in India. The first Health Cooperative was organised by the Barpali Village Service (Quakers), who were pioneers in India in popularising Water-seal Latrines and Water Pumps first in Orissa, and then elsewhere. I worked with the Quakers as the Educationalist for one year.
We have to recognise the traditional wisdom and give the necessary weight to the Grandma's knowledge. The Grandmas all over India possess a wealth of knowledge in matters relating to herbal medicines and traditional medicines.
After all, health is everybody's business.
