Women officials start drive to keep pregnant mothers safe
UDAIPUR: Five women officials in Udaipur provided medicines to over 25,000 pregnant women in a drive to protect them from Covid-19 infection amid the deadly second wave.
The initiative, called “Umeed”, was started by Udaipur zilla parishad chief executive officer (CEO) Dr Manju Choudhary, deputy SP Prem Dhande, IAS officers Aperna Gupta and Gunjan Singh, and RAS officer Jyoti Kakwani.
Under the drive, pregnant women are given medicines to and educated about the virus.
“I thought of starting ‘Umeed’ after the pregnant wife of one of our staff members died after battling Covid-19. That was the moment that shook me. I am also a gynecologist and I can understand when a woman dies along with her baby. So I decided to ensure that no women meet a similar fate,” Dr Manju Choudhary said.
“I joined hands with four other women officers and started this mission. We have set up control rooms at district and block levels. I trained our SDMS and block medical officers through video conferencing. We have made our own guidelines. We roped in police to assist the pregnant women in emergencies and deal with the issues related to transportation during the lockdown.”
She said the operation started 15 days back under which a door-to-door survey was carried out at 2,100 villages of Udaipur with the help of 3,300 Asha and aganwadi workers to detect Covid infection. About 25,000 pregnant women and 300,000 children were identified in rural areas, but no severe case was found.
The women were divided into three categories -- Red Green and Yellow. The Red category included women who needed an immediate referral for hospitalisation. The Green category was divided into Green A for women with mild influenza-like illness (ILI symptoms) and Green B for women who were fine but someone from their family got ILI symptoms. Yellow indicated moderate symptoms.
Deputy SP Prem Dhande said the mission was launched to reach out to pregnant women in rural areas and provide them timely help.
“Police teams worked to arrange transport for pregnant women so that they could reach hospital in time. We coordinated with other members of the team and local police stations to ensure that emergency services operate unhindered,” she said.
IAS officer Aperna Gupta said that besides arranging medical assistance, the team is providing medicines and ration kits to pregnant women in rural areas. She said that along with an administrative team, special monitoring teams have been constituted at panchayat levels to take care of the identified pregnant women.
IAS officer Gunjan Singh is visiting houses of the pregnant women identified in the survey.
“The number of women in the Red category should not increase at any cost,” the officer said.