KAMLA NAGAR, DELHI - 110007 ANIMATION | VFX tel. - CHANGE

DECEMBER 2011
WOMEN & CHILDREN COVERAGE
One Crore Women Registered Under
Mother & Child Tracking System
The total number of pregnant women registered in Mother &
Child Tracking System(MCTS), an e-governance initiative of the
Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, has crossed the one crore
mark on 28 October, 2011. The Mother and Child Tracking System
(MCTS) is designed to collate information of all pregnant women
and infants so as to ensure delivery of maternal and child health
services from conception till 42 days after delivery in the case of
pregnant women and up to five years of age in the case of children
so as to ensure that all pregnant women and all new born receive
full maternal and immunization services. The number of children
registered in the system is also expected to cross 50 lakh by the
end of this month.
MCTS was started by the MoHFW last year. Union Minister for
Health and Family Welfare Shri Ghulam Nabi Azad remarked that
“MCTS marks a paradigm shift in the approach towards
monitoring health and family welfare programmes as it is aimed
at ensuring complete delivery of maternal and child health
services to all pregnant women and new born in an effort to
reduce maternal, infant and child mortality in the country”.
Through MCTS, Government of India is making efforts to
institutionalise the beneficiary based approach of monitoring
health and family welfare services’ delivery, the Minister added.
The Minister also made sample verification calls to registered
women under the MCTS database from the MCTS cell in the
Ministry to verify the database entries today.
Under MCTS, an online registration system has been developed
for the purpose, in collaboration with the National Informatics
Centre. A nationwide training programme had been organised
throughout the country to operationalise the system. In addition,
a call centre has been established in the Ministry of H&FW to
directly contact pregnant women and parents of the new born
registered under the system to verify the services that they have
received. MCTS is being implemented throughout the country
with active cooperation and involvement of State Governments.
The project is being implemented in the Mission Mode and a
dedicated unit has been established in the Ministry of Health
and Family Welfare for coordinating and collaborating with
States/Union Territories for the implementation of the project.
The information generated through the system is also being used
for planning maternal and child health services at the grass roots
level by the female health worker in association with village level
volunteers like ASHA and Aanganwadi Worker.
MCTS serves two vital purposes as it facilitates the service
provider at the grass roots level in delivering services to women
and children according to their specific needs besides supporting
health managers at different tiers of the system in monitoring
delivery of maternal and child health services. An innovative
feature of MCTS is the application of the information technology
tools for its implementation right up to the village level. The
information technology based innovative approach adopted in
the implementation of MCTS has resulted in the recognition of
MCTS as an innovative e-governance project by the high power
Committee constituted under the chairmanship of the Cabinet
Secretary, Government of India.
Africa’s Kids Deprived of Secondary
Education: UN
Two out of three children in sub-Saharan Africa are left out of
secondary school as governments are having trouble meeting
the increased demand, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organisation (Unesco) said in a report.
The report titled ‘Global Education Digest 2011: Comparing
Education Statistics Across the World’, which was launched at
the UN Headquarters, said that in sub-Saharan Africa, there are
enough school places for just 36 percent of children of age to
enroll.
Albert Motivans, head of education indicators and data analysis
at the Unesco Institute for Statistics, said secondary education
was ‘vital for development’ and was the bridge to the world of
work. Motivans said secondary education has important benefits
at the societal level to stimulate economies due to a more skilled
workforce. ‘We seek greater recognition of the role of secondary
education, as more countries near universal primary education,
this new report sets out how secondary education should be
recognised as a key element of post 2015 development agenda,’
he said.
Globally, secondary schools have been accommodating nearly
100 million more students each decade, said the report. With
increasing numbers of children attending and finishing primary
school education, the demand for places in secondary education
has increased exponentially, it said.
The report also said that a child in the last grade of primary
school only has at best a 75 percent chance of making the
transition into lower secondary school in about 20 countries
around the world, with an ‘overwhelming’ majority in sub-Saharan
Africa. ‘There can be no escape from poverty without a vast
expansion of secondary education,’ Unesco Director-General
Irina Bokova said in a press release.
‘This is a minimum entitlement for equipping youth with the
knowledge and skills they need to secure decent livelihoods in
today’s globalised world. It is going to take ambition and
commitment to meet this challenge,’ she said.
The report, which was produced by the Unesco Institute for
Statistics, showed a wide-range of indicators on the extent to
which girls and boys are enrolling and finishing secondary
education. Girls face the greatest barriers as the gender gap
widens, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, said the report. About
35 million girls were enrolled in lower secondary education in
2009, it said.
Hendrik van der Pol, director of the Unesco Institute for Statistics,
said: ‘All of these data underscore a central message — secondary
education is the next great challenge.’
Corporal Punishment cannot be Practiced
in the Name of Disciplining Child
National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR)
Chairperson Prof. Shantha Sinha has stressed the need to
eliminate all forms of corporal punishment practiced in the name
of ‘disciplining’ a child.
“We need to understand that children, like adults, too have a
mind of their own and they do not enjoy having an unequal
relationship. Therefore, any kind of domination of children by
adults is unacceptable,” Dr Sinha opined. She also harped on
the need for different stakeholders to engage positively with
children.
Dr Sinha was speaking at the discussion forum on the report of
Working Group of NCPCR on Guidelines for Eliminating Corporal
Punishment in schools under section 17 of the Right to Education
(RTE) Act, 2009 held recently in national Capital.
The report enumerated some of the key strategies that could be
employed based on the levels of problem behaviour exhibited by
children. The discussion also stressed the need for institutional
reform and humanising school campuses so that they become
healing spaces for children. Later in the seminar, a dialogue on
eliminating corporal punishment from all settings was also
organised in collaboration with UNICEF.
According to a study on child abuse conducted in 2007 by the
Ministry of Women and Child Development it was found that
every two out of three school children reported facing corporal
punishment. The States of Assam, Mizoram and Uttar Pradesh
reported the highest rates of corporal punishment, while
Rajasthan and Goa had the lowest, the study revealed.
The Commission has, since its inception in March 2007,
responded to corporal punishment from across the country, held
public hearings on the matter, issued guidelines for prevention
of corporal punishment and appropriate action of schools,
education department, departments of women and child
development, social welfare and police.
Foetal Exposure to Chemical BPA
causes Problems in Girls
Foetal exposure to the chemical bisphenol A or BPA, used in
making plastic containers and other consumer goods, can cause
behavioural and emotional problems among young girls,
acccording to a study. BPA is found in many consumer products,
including canned food linings, polycarbonate plastics, dental
sealants, and some receipts made from thermal paper. Most
people living in industrialized nations are exposed to BPA, which
has been shown to retard growth in animals and cause
cardiovascular disease and diabetes in people.
In a 2009 study, Harvard School of Public Health researchers
showed that drinking from polycarbonate bottles increased the
level of urinary BPA. Joe Braun, research fellow in environmental
health at HSPH, who led the study and his colleagues found that
gestational BPA exposure was linked with more behavioural
problems at age three, especially in girls, according to a Harvard
statement.
The researchers collected data from 244 mothers and their threeyear-old
children in the Health Outcomes and Measures of the
Environment Study. Mothers provided three urine samples
during pregnancy and at birth that were tested for BPA; their
children were tested each year from ages one to three. When the
children were three years old, the mothers completed surveys
about their children’s behaviour. BPA was detected in over 85
percent of the urine samples from the mothers and over 96 percent
of the children’s urine samples.
‘None of the children had clinically abnormal behaviour, but some
children had more behaviour problems than others. Thus, we
examined the relationship between the mom’s and children’s BPA
concentrations and the different behaviors,’ Braun said.
World Bank-IFC Report Finds
Government Reforms Enhance Economic
Opportunities for Women
A new report from the World Bank and IFC released finds that
women still face legal and regulatory hurdles to fully participating
in the economy.
Women, Business and the Law 2012: Removing Barriers to
Economic Inclusion finds that while36 economies reduced legal
differences between men and women, 103 out of 141 economies
studied still impose legal differences on the basis of gender in at
least one of the report’s key indicators. The report also identifies
41 law and regulatory reforms enacted between June 2009 and
March 2011 that could enhance women’s economic opportunities.
Globally, women represent 49.6 percent of the population but
only 40.8 percent of the workforce in the formal sector. Legal
differences between men and women may explain this gap. The
report shows that economies with greater legal differentiation
between men and women have, on average, lower female
participation in the formal labor force.
“Competitiveness and productivity have much to do with the
efficient allocation of resources, including human resources,”
said Augusto Lopez-Claros, Director, Global Indicators and
Analysis, World Bank Group. “The economy suffers when half
of the world’s population is prevented from fully participating. It
is certainly no surprise that the world’s most competitive
economies are those where the opportunity gap between women
and men is the narrowest.”
The report measures such things as a woman’s ability to sign a
contract, travel abroad, manage property, and interact with public
authorities and the private sector. In all economies, married women
face more legal differentiations than unmarried women. In 23
economies, married women cannot legally choose where to live,
and in 29 they cannot be legally recognized as head of household.
Every region includes economies with unequal rules for men and
women, although the extent of the inequality varies widely. On
average, high-income economies have fewer differences than
middle- and low-income economies. The Middle East and North
Africa have the most legal differences between men and women,
followed by South Asia and Africa. In Africa, a notable exception
is Kenya, which leads globally with the most gender-parity
reforms during the past two years. Regionally, the most
improvements in gender parity occurred in Latin America and
the Caribbean, Europe and Central Asia.
About the Women, Business and the Law Project:
The project measures how regulations and institutions
differentiate between women and men in ways that may affect
women’s incentives or capacity to work or to set up and run a
business.Women, Business and the Law objectively measures
such legal differentiations on the basis of gender in 141 economies
around the world, covering six areas: accessing institutions, using
property, getting a job, providing incentives to work, building
credit, and going to court. While the project provides a clear
picture of gender gaps based on legal differences in each economy,
it is a simple snapshot measuring only legal differentiation. It
does not capture the full extent of the gender gap, nor does it
indicate the relative importance of each aspect covered.
About the World Bank Group
The World Bank Group is one of the world’s largest sources of
funding and knowledge for developing countries. It comprises
five closely associated institutions: the International Bank for
Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International
Development Association (IDA), which together form the World
Bank; the International Finance Corporation (IFC); the
Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA); and the
International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes
(ICSID). Each institution plays a distinct role in the mission to
fight poverty and improve living standards for people in the
developing world.
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