India empowers rural women through pregnancy test strips
By IANSFriday, March 26, 2010
NEW DELHI - India distributed over 65 million pregnancy test strips to rural women in the last three years to reduce unwanted pregnancies and to improve antenatal care, the health ministry said Friday, adding that the step has empowered women in taking a major decision about starting families.
“There were some distribution problem in some pockets but it was empowering for rural women. The test strips empowered them to take a decision about an unborn child,” said Shakuntala Gamlin, a joint secretary in the health ministry.
The scheme of distributing Pregnancy Test Cards (PTCs) was conducted in two phases across India. The first phase took care of 11 states and the next 17 states. The programme addressed key issues like starting ante-natal care in first trimester, contraceptive provisions and unsafe abortions due to late detection of pregnancy, the official added.
The scheme was implemented in association with contraceptive major Hindustan Latex Ltd, which spent around Rs.100 million to roll out this scheme in two phases. The official said the authorities distributed over 21.65 million PTCs in 2007-08, 21.73 million PTCs in 2008-09 and 21.74 million in 2009-10.
“States like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar are crucial and unless success is achieved there, the scheme won’t be a great success,” Gamlin told a gathering of state level officers managing the scheme.
Vasanthi Krishnan, chief executive officer of the Hindustan Latex Family Planning Promotion Trust said the scheme made many women come to primary health centers for help early and started the anti-natal care.
“This Nishchay PTC helps women access medical care in the first trimester itself. The success can be measured from the number of early registration in primary and community health centres after women conducted the test themselves,” said K.R.S. Krishnan, senior vice president of Hindustan Latex.
Authorities said the programme was part of the National Rural Health Mission and the accredited social health activists (ASHA) were the key implementing authorities for this scheme.
