tailieunhanh - NATIONAL HEALTH POLICY 2002 (India)

The best way to ensure that infants are not born with HIV or acquire it during breast-feeding is to provide HIV-positive women the care they need for their own HIV disease. Vertical transmission is certainly an issue where the false dichotomy pitting prevention and treatment against each other is truly nonsense—in studies where HIV-positive women get appropriate care, HIV transmission to infants is largely eradicated2 . Vertical transmission programs must be linked with HIV treatment programs. The HIV-positive pregnant women most at risk for transmitting HIV to their infants are also the sickest women who are at greatest risk of dying. | NATIONAL HEALTH POLICY 2002 India 1. INTRODUCTORY A National Health Policy was last formulated in 1983 and since then there have been marked changes in the determinant factors relating to the health sector. Some of the policy initiatives outlined in the NHP-1983 have yielded results while in several other areas the outcome has not been as expected. The NHP-1983 gave a general exposition of the policies which required recommendation in the circumstances then prevailing in the health sector. The noteworthy initiatives under that policy were - i A phased time-bound programme for setting up a well-dispersed network of comprehensive primary health care services linked with extension and health education designed in the context of the ground reality that elementary health problems can be resolved by the people themselves ii Intermediation through Health volunteers having appropriate knowledge simple skills and requisite technologies iii Establishment of a well-worked out referral system to ensure that patient load at the higher levels of the hierarchy is not needlessly burdened by those who can be treated at the decentralized level iv An integrated net-work of evenly spread speciality and superspeciality services encouragement of such facilities through private investments for patients who can pay so that the draw on the Government s facilities is limited to those entitled to free use. Government initiatives in the pubic health sector have recorded some noteworthy successes over time. Smallpox and Guinea Worm Disease have been eradicated from the country Polio is on the verge of being eradicated Leprosy Kala Azar and Filariasis can be expected to be eliminated in the foreseeable future. There has been a substantial drop in the Total Fertility Rate and Infant Mortality Rate. The success of the initiatives taken in the public health field are reflected in the progressive improvement of many demographic epidemiological infrastructural indicators over time - .