Manipur CM’s ‘Health for All’ scheme screens more than 1 lakh individuals

Our Correspondent

Imphal, June 12 (EMN): More than one lakh individuals have been screened for 10 non-communicable diseases (NCD) diseases under Manipur’s Chief Minister’s ‘Health for All’, a door-to-door healthcare service scheme, which is the first of its kind in Northeast India, Manipur health officials said today.

“After the introduction of ‘Chief Minister’s Health for All’ or CMHA to the population, so far 1,41,519 persons have been screened for 10 NCD diseases with primary focus on diabetes and hypertension diseases,” Director Dr. K Rajo Singh of the Manipur Health services department said. “We’ve covered 613 villages which are linked to 155 health and wellness centres.”

Apart from detection, treatment and follow-up, the beneficiaries under CMHA would be given medicines at their doorsteps. The scheme would especially benefit elderly patients above 60 years, bed-ridden patients and NCD patients, who are not on regular follow-up or who have not visited health centres due to financial or physical problems.

Stating that CMHA aims to conduct health check-ups for all the citizens of the state at their doorsteps, Dr. Singh said the primary focus would be early identification and diagnosis of 10 NCD diseases — hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, kidney ailments, chronic respiratory disease, mental health problems, tuberculosis besides three common cancer — oral, breast and cervical.

The step has been taken after the successful implementation of the Chief Minister Hakshelgi Tengbang, a popular health assistance scheme which provides medical cover up to INR 5 lakh per family per year for seven critical diseases and other primary and secondary ailments.

According to Dr. Y Premchandra, nodal officer NDC of the Manipur health department, CMHA which aims to complete the primary health check-up for all citizens of the state was started to implement from the first week of October last year.

“During the screening process, we’ve detected 13,077 confirm hypertension cases out of 54,896 suspected hypertension cases,” he said.

“Similarly, 10,778 confirm diabetes cases were detected out of 53,445 suspected diabetes cases.” More diseases were detected among the women than the males, he added.

When asked about the timeline of the CMHA scheme, he said, “This being a continuous process for every year, we’re targeting to cover around five lakh population by the end of September this year as we’ve already started the scheme since October last year.”