Govt seeks world record tag for ‘Daughters Are Precious’ event
The state health department will get the ‘Daughters Are Precious’ event registered with the Guinness World Records.
Through the event, organised at 773 centres across 33 districts of Rajasthan, 850 volunteers, known as DAP (daughters are precious) Rakshaks, held a direct dialogue over sex determination issue with 1.58 lakh youth for two hours on Friday.
National Health Mission mission director Naveen Jain said the event organised for a social cause has set a new record. “We will send all details of the event including photographs, video clips, attendance sheets etc to register this event in Guinness World Records,” he added.
Jain said, “Last year, the department felt that by enforcing the PCPNDT Act, sex determination and female foeticide could be controlled to a limited extent. Higher success can be achieved by changing the mentality of people by starting an awareness campaign.”
The NHM chief said the DAP programme, launched on September 23, 2016, was organised at many institutions in all 33 districts in the last 14 months. Last month, it was decided to carry the ‘save the girl child’ message among youth through frequent
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interactions and the concept of DAP Rakshak is a step in this direction, he added.
He said a programme to train volunteers was organised on November4,whichwasattended by 685 people. The decision to hold the dialogues on November 17 was decided at the same time, Jain said.
The NHM chief said that although 95 decoy operations — including 26 inter-state decoy operations — have taken place under the mission since 2009, but despite that there are many districts where sex determination is still taking place. “With this event, organised on such a big level, there will be fear among middlemen, who take people for sex determination, doctors, who conduct sex determination and even the people who want to get sex determination done. I hope youth will act as informers and inform the department if any sex determination takes place in their area,” he added.
Health minister Kali Charan Saraf extended his wishes to the teams of health and medical department, pre-conception and pre-natal diagnostic technique (PCPNDT)cellandtheNHM.He said the health department by organising such events will make all possible efforts to remove the prevailing social evil of sex determination and discrimination among son and daughter from the society.