Social Awareness and Actions to Neutralize Pneumonia Successfully (SAANS) campaign launched in Chhattisgarh

Raipur: With an
objective of preventing pneumonia, Social Awareness and Actions to Neutralize
Pneumonia Successfully (SAANS) campaign has been launched in Chhattisgarh on
Friday on the occasion of World Pneumonia Day.

The campaign will be
run in the state from November 12 this year to February 28, 2022. With the
objective of “Pneumonia Nahi Toh Bachpan Sahi”, through this campaign focus
will be given on children of 0 to 5 years as about 1.30 lakh children die every
year from pneumonia across the country.

The main objective of
this program is to create public awareness in the society regarding pneumonia
occurring in children of 0 to 5 years and cases of severe pneumonia and to
promote treatment in health institutions of the state. About 35 lakh children
of the state will be benefited through this programme.

Besides, PCV
(Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine) has also been launched in the state this year
for the prevention of pneumonia among children. National New Born week has also
been launched in the presence of health minister TS Singh Deo. The main
objective of this campaign is to create public awareness about the need for the
survival and development of newborns. During this week, health check-up of
newborns will be organized in all medical college hospitals and in the OPD of
district hospitals, screening for newborns, all SNCUs run in the state.

Health minister TS
Singh Deo, while participating in this virtual meeting organized on Pneumonia
Day stressed on bringing public awareness about pneumonia in newborns saying
that there are more chances of catching infection during delivery in newborns.

The minister said that along
with National Newborn Week, we all have to work together seriously on the issue
of newborn babies, so that “we can reduce the IMR rate by 50% in the next
1 year”. This rate is 40 which we have to bring down to half in the next 1
year and also need to focus on MMR. He congratulated all the officers on the
launch of both the programmes and gave them best wishes for its success.