Shillong, Jun 1: Chief Minister Conrad Sangma today said that real barriers exist in promoting institutional deliveries by pregnant women in Meghalaya.
He was speaking at a workshop themed “From Science to State Action – Building Integrated Systems for Early Childhood Development” organised under the Meghalaya Early Childhood Development Mission in partnership with Van Leer Foundation and Asian Development Bank in Shillong today.
Sangma said the State government initially assumed that institutional deliveries would solve maternal mortality but analysis showed the real barriers were “economic and logistical in nature, including transportation cost, distance and the lack of support for expectant mothers.”
“We were encouraging institutional deliveries without recognising the economic realities these mothers faced,” he said.
He informed that instead of buying more ambulances to ferry expectant mothers to hospitals, the government used local vehicle owners for transport and also set up Safe Motherhood Homes.
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“The lesson here is that we must identify where the actual problem lies and then design solutions that are practical, affordable and tailored to local realities,” Sangma said.
Linking health to economics, he said that many young mothers had frequent pregancies because of limited economic opportunities and financial independence.
Sangma also said that the goal is “to ensure that every child reaches his or her full potential, that no mother loses her life unneccessarily, and that every citizen receives the support needed to live a meaningful and dignified life.”
According to him, completion of infrastructure projects alone “should not be regarded as success.”
He cited an example of how an engineer showed him a canal was successfully built by the Water Resources Department.
“I told him (engineer) that he was mistaken. The true measure of success is how much agricultural production has increased because of those canals. The canal itself is not the objective; improving people’s lives is,” the chief minister said.
Sangma also cited another example of the newly opened indoor stadium at Polo Ground built at the cost of Rs 160 crore.
“The true measure of success of the indoor stadium would be reflected in the achievements of young athletes and the positive impact sports have on their lives,” he said.
On matters of innovation and good governance, Sangma said that Meghalaya learned from Odisha, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, and Sikkim.
During the workshop, the model ‘Chile Crece Contigo’ (Chile Grows With You) was presented by Patricia Núñez Zamora of the Van Leer Foundation, Chile.
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