Toll-Free Government Helpline for Villagers for Health-Related Queries

Villagers will soon be able to call central government's toll free number to complain or enquire about health facilities for mothers and children.

Highlights

The Mother and Child Tracking Facilitation Centre (MCTFC) will introduce a facility where villagers will soon be able to call the government’s toll free number for health-related queries.
This will facilitate the monitoring of quality of health services being imparted locally.

People residing in the rural areas will soon be able to call the central government’s toll free number to complain or enquire about health facilities for mothers and children, in their vicinity.

The Mother and Child Tracking Facilitation Centre (MCTFC)

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‘The new inbound calling facility will allow both the rural populace and health workers to contact the government through the Mother and Child Tracking Facilitation Centre.’

As part of its Integrated Child Development Services the government set up a Mother and Child Tracking Facilitation Centre (MCTFC) in 2014.

The Facilitation Centre enables to make calls to ASHA workers and beneficiaries to monitor the quality of health services being imparted locally, through a much larger infrastructure.

Since the launch of MCTFC in April 2014, call centre agents have contacted nearly 40 lakh beneficiaries. Similarly, they have reached out to over 2 lakh Auxiliary Nurse Midwives (ANMs)and nearly 6 lakh ASHAs. Over 10.5 crore pregnant women and children are registered with the Facilitation Centre.

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The facility is now available for 13 states and uses Hindi and English for communication. New regional languages - Gujarati, Telugu, Odiya and Assamese - will soon be incorporated as well.

Officials at MCTFC say this mechanism has helped them to:

flag misuse of contraceptive methods on occasions
ensure that a mother does not leave the hospital until 48-hours after delivering a child in order to ensure basic ante-natal care.
every pregnant woman gets complete and quality ante and post natal care
every child receives a full range of immunization services

Inbound Calling

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A senior official of National Institute of Health and Family Welfare (NIHFW) said that this facilitation centre will soon be introducing inbound calling facility, which will allow both the rural populace and health workers to contact the government through MCTFC.

A caller can give a missed call at toll free number 10588 and will receive a call back within 90 seconds.

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The MCTFC operates from the premises of NIHFW here.

86 call agents make 5,000 calls every day on an average.

Call Agent’s Duty

The job of a call agent is to contact an expectant mother to know whether the ASHA worker has:

counseled her about the benefits of delivering a child in a hospital
shared information on various government and state policies designed for her
administered nutrition supplements like iron and folic acid

The agent also calls ASHA workers to know:

if they have sufficient stock of vaccines, drugs and nutrition supplements
to collect details about health infrastructure like a labour room, primary health care centre, in the village
to educate ASHA workers about new government schemes announced for the benefit of mothers and children.

Reference

Sh Ghulam Nabi Azad Inaugurates ‘Mother and Child Tracking Facilitation Centre’ - (http://pib.nic.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=102891)

Source-Medindia