The district administration has managed to considerably bring down the number of deliveries of children at home in the district's remote tribal villages and make the people aware about institutional delivery, an official said today.
With the ASHA (accredited social health activists) workers raising the awareness among villagers about the benefits of institutional delivery, the number of deliveries done at home has come down from 1.05 per cent to 0.31 per cent this year, Thane zilla parishad's chief executive officer Vivek Bhimanwar told reporters here.
The main reason for the tribal people to prefer home delivery was non-availability of vehicle and medical officers in hospitals, he said.
"We identified the villages where such practice (of home delivery) was still on and took the help of ASHA workers to explain to the villagers the importance of institutional delivery," Bhimanwar said.
The zilla parishad is also focussing on providing proper education facilities in aanganwadis (government-run rural mother and child care centres), balwadis (pre-schools run for economically weaker sections of the society), and zilla parishad-run schools, he said.
It will also focus on repairing toilets, and providing hand wash stations and running water facilities in the schools, he said.
Bhimanwar also said that the cases of severe acute malnutrition (SAM) have come down from 145 last year to 105 this year and those of moderate acute malnutrition (MAM) have decreased from 818 to 660 in the district's tribal areas.
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