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Rajasthan bid to check population explosion

Aarti Dhar

Intensive awareness campaign planned

JAIPUR: Faced with serious challenges of high population and low health indicators, Rajasthan will focus on checking population explosion through intensive awareness campaigns under the ambitious Centrally-funded National Rural Health Mission.

As a first step towards this, State Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje Scindia has had intensive discussions with T. V. Antony, adviser to the Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry on Population Stabilisation who is better know for his contribution to the steep fall in the Crude Birth Rate of Tamil Nadu in 1980s and '90s. Rajasthan could well adopt the "awareness-oriented and non-coercive'' concept of family planning that brought down the birth rate in Tamil Nadu from 28 per thousand to 19 per thousand between 1984 and `94. Rajasthan happens to be among the 18 focus States of the Rural Health Mission where health indicators need urgent attention. It has an Infant Mortality Rate of 78 per thousand live births, Total Fertility Rate of 3.9 per thousand, Maternal Mortality Rate of 670 per lakh with just 24.9 per cent children receiving immunization and only 46.3 per cent women having safe deliveries. The Crude Birth Rate here is 22.9 per thousand which means that the population could touch 9 crores by 2020 as against the present 6 crores.

Admitting that the decadal growth rate of 29 per cent in the State was "unmanageable'', the Chief Minister said delivery of facilities to remote areas was a challenge and expensive but assured that the Government was committed to getting out of the "BIMARU'' (sick) States' list.

Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Anbumani Ramadoss has already announced Rs. 264 crores for Rajasthan for 2005-06 under the National Rural Health Mission launched in Jaipur earlier this week. He believes Rajasthan could be the model for the rest of the country as he finds the atmosphere conducive as far as implementation of the Mission is concerned.

According to Mr. Antony, the major problem in Rajasthan was early marriages that often resulted in the failure of other family planning methods, as was the case in Tamil Nadu some decades ago

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