AGARTALA, June 24 (TIWN): Modi Govt’s important project ‘National De-worming progarmme’ launched in 2015 to benefit children by reducing the threat of parasitic worm infections, (a widespread health issue affecting the children allover India). Even though ‘De-worming progarmme’ was implemented in Tripura under the observation of Health Dept. Education Dept. and Social Welfare Dept. jointly but it failed to achieve coverage to 90% of school childrens. But after 2 rounds of De-worming effort in state Tripura could achieve only 79.97% of its target. Whereas in the year 2015 the coverage was a mere 64.96 %, in 2016 it progressed with only 79.97 %. But whereas the Education Director, Health Dept. Director, NHM MD were critcising the DMs, ADM, and other officials for such a poor performance, the Principal Secretary M Nagaraju simply washed off hands by saying that , “In last year during launching the programme, it was said that Health Dept. is just to help the Social Welfare and Education Dept. as needed basis, so the failure or success is not liability of the Health Dept. only, just because it’s regarding children’s health”.Nagaraju added, “May be due to lack of publicity, awareness the mission failed to achieve targets.

 The reason behind the failure need to investigated more and we need to go with micro-planning to monitor the project”. 

Moreover, Nagaraju also said, “I yet don’t know about other states performance”.

Union Ministry of Health & Family Welfare launched the first ‘National De-worming Day’ on February 10, 2015 including all the states and territories as a part of a massive school-based de-worming effort. Trainings, funds all were provided by the central Govt. to the states.

Among the other speakers, however there was NHM MD Ravel Hemendra Kumar who blasted the Tripura Govt. officials for their huge negligence in this scheme.

Ravel said, “Whereas the target was to cover 90-95 % and to provide children with de-worming pills, but it has ended with 75% -80 % only”. “A DM is responsible to organize all the departments including Health, Education and Social Welfare Dept. to achieve the any target”. He further criticizes the ASHA women for not working properly district-wise.  “There should be a pressure upon the teachers too to run the schemes properly and the work need to be done on the Spot, as it has been seen after medicines provided to the schools they are not distributing the medicines among students and these things need to check out and the tradition of negligence need to stop”, he added.

Director of School Education Prashant Goyal also blasted all the Departments (Education, Social Welfare, Health Dept.). “I see no reason why Education Dept. could not get the success”, he said.

“If Dhalai and North Dist. could perform better, why the other districts can not?”, said Goyal. He further criticize the private schools poor condition and said, “Please be serious about children’s health and include the private schools too under observation”. “The monitoring by DM and ADMs are not at all satisfactory”, he added. The officials also do not maintain the data of ongoing works, which is not at all expectable, said Goyal.

J K Debbarma, Director of Health Service said, although the pilot project began on 2015 for all states, but since 2004 the de-worming project was already there for Tripura ADC areas.

“We need to co-ordinate to cover the students who are not yet covered under the schemes”, Director of Social Welfare Dept D Darlong said.

Most surprisingly, Health Dept Principal Secretary  Nagaraju managed to escape responsibilities  by putting all the blames on Social Welfare Dept. and Education Dept. and said, “Health Dept. is just to help monitoring the other Departments activities like ‘National De-worming progarmme’ even though overall health of school children falls under Nagaraju's responsibility.