Health Desk

Health is an indicator of well-being that has immediate implications for the quality of life as well as for productive capacities and capabilities. Even though the State of Tripura has been moving forward for attaining the goal of "Health for All", an assessment of health status basing on key indicators like infant mortality, crude birth rate, crude death rate, life expectancy and nutritional status suggests that the goal is still a distant reality . Life expectancy at birth is below that of the country and in Tripura it is one of the lowest. The problem is much worse in rural areas. The infant mortality rate in rural areas in Tripura is one of the highest as is the case with Crude birth rate and Crude death rate . The IMR stands at a figure of 44.2 per 1,000 births. Only solace is that it is lower than the all India average of 157 per 1,000 births . The proportion of severely under weighed children in rural areas of Tripura stands at 13% now.

Jana Unnayan Samiti Tripura (JUST) has focus much on development of rural health in the state of Tripura. In the year 2009, with the financial assistance of Bishop's Conference of Italy a project was initiated in the diocese mainly to intervene in Malaria, TB and HIV/AIDS; The project covers all the four districts of Tripura targeting 110 villages....

The main activities that are carried out are: a) Development of BCC/IEC materials, b) Counselling pregnant and nursing mothers, c) linkages with governments, d) organizing camps for rti/sti, e) camps for permanent family planning techniques, f) training for health workers, g) training to quacks, h) training to traditional birth attendants, i) community awareness for HIV/AIDS and workshops, j) vectors control for malaria, k) blood samples collections for malaria cases, l) awareness on malaria, l) awareness on tuberculosis, m) medical support to TB patients, and n) individual and group sessions.

In 2011, yet another program is initiated through the collaboration of Caritas India on Malaria. Here again we have identified 100 revenue villages of west and Dhalai District. Dr. Anut Debbarma is the project manager, he implements the project with our trained nurses.