The State government is working on a decentralised system in health care to enhance collaboration for institutional convergence to ensure effective health service delivery in Meghalaya.
“We are creating a decentralised system to ensure greater participation, especially among the frontline workers including ASHAs and anganwadis and the cutting-edge level officers including BDOs, medical officers and CDPOs to improve various health indicators as part of implementing the state health policy frameworks”, Principal Health Secretary, Sampath Kumar said.
Addressing a two-day sector meeting workshop on December 1, organized by the Health Department, Social Welfare Department and Rural-MSRLS (NRLM) of the Community and Rural Development Department Kumar said the decentralised system is a result of the past experiences of the state, one of them being when Meghalaya recorded 93 per cent recovery of Severe Acute Malnourished (SAM) and 97 per cent recovery of moderate acute malnourished (MAM) children (identified in September 2020).
“This was the highest recovery recorded in terms of nutritional indicators in Meghalaya so far. This case is a rare example of how collaboration between various departments, regular monitoring of target indicators, building accountability among various actors by promoting decentralised adaptive leadership and use of data for effective decision-making led to the overall strengthening of state capacity in effectively addressing a complex challenge, like nutrition in Meghalaya,” he said.
Following up on this, the aim is to institutionalise this collaborative effort. The sector meeting workshops aim at streamlining the sector meetings, which will be taking place in 150 health facilities across the state at least once a month henceforth. Currently, the review is happening at the state level and the district level on a weekly basis. With sector meetings in place, the process will become decentralised and more people will be involved at the sector level. The grassroots as well as cutting edge functionaries from the three departments will work in a collaborative manner as part of a decentralised catalytic leadership model, which has been innovated by the state. These efforts form part of Meghalaya’s State Health Policy framework implementation that was passed by the cabinet in March.
Dr R Tariang added that this is the first time that such a collaborative approach towards a common issue has been taken by the state that entails a convergence of three departments – Health and Family Welfare, Social Welfare and the Rural-MSRLS (NRLM) of C&RD Department. Through this workshop, the field level functionaries from various departments were brought together in an attempt to not only try and understand the problem from the grassroot perspective, but also to understand their challenges and come up with solutions and guidelines to assist them in achieving the larger goal. This will go a long way in achieving the state’s objectives towards strengthening health systems through a multidisciplinary approach.
Adding to the statement made by Kumar, Dr Calvaryn Sangma said that health as a subject cannot be the sole responsibility of just one department and that through a collaborative approach and with the help of sectoral convergence, every other department such as the Social Welfare, Community & Rural Development as well as the Education Department can play a crucial role in furthering developmental objectives.
