LABOUR- Rehabilitation Assistance to Closed Textile Mills Workers

mothers and children, (iii) Minor forest produce collection centres in tribal areas, where pregnant mothers likely to come, (iv) In irrigated command areas a large number of pregnant women would be available for coverage under UIP, in peak transplanting seasons and during peak harvest seasons, (iv) In village Anganwadi centres. It is not true as the Ministry of Welfare claims, that in the villages served by Anganwadis, I MR was been brought down basically because of high coverage of children under UIP. In the Anganwadi centres, children above age 2 attend and how can newborns get immunised?, (vi) A significant number of pregnant mothers and children are presently immunised in private nursing homes mostly in urban areas. In most of these polio drops are provided by service clubs like Lions and Rotary. But they do not provide all the six antigens. As long as new borns add to the stock of children in families, UIP would have to track them and their mothers continuously. Ad hoc and sporadic tracking, as is done in immunisation campaigns, helps neither mothers nor children. A system has to be designed now before new districts are taken up under UIP by the government. There is adequate health delivery structure and an inbuilt information base available for MCH activities. Unfortunately UIP is treated as yet another centrally sponsored scheme by the health ministry, where more attention is bestowed on syringes, vaccines, cold chain equipments, walk-in coolers, refrigerators, which are undoubtedly important, but they do not by themselves ensure complete mother and child immunisation, in the absence of a sound tracking system. It is high time that ministry recognises the valuable contribution that non-health sectors can made towards successful UIP and the health improvement of mothers and children.