Minister of Health and Family Welfare P. Longon urged the church leaders to assist the health workers at grass-root level in creating awareness and promoting healthy practices in regard to health issues and programme to promote a healthy state.
The minister was addressing at the two-day partnership workshop with church leaders to improve demand for immunization and create awareness around maternal and child health services in Nagaland state Tuesday at Hotel Vivor Kohima. The workshop was organized by State Health Society in collaboration with UNICEF.
Longon said church being the most important part of civil society, such events would bring the efforts together for structured and vision oriented awareness programme.
He informed that state government was trying its best to work towards the welfare of the people of Nagaland by implementing various schemes, keeping health as one of the priorities. He said community needed to be informed about the ongoing development while also capacities needed to be built across all the levels and monitored intelligently.
The minister regretted that there was a gap between service provision and the information about the services among the people, saying that people were not well informed on the benefits of the government programmes. In view of this, Longon added that many people were not able to harness the desired outcome of the health programmes.
He said in immunization programme the state coverage was low and one of the major reason was low demand for immunization services in the state. Longon said platform such as village health and nutrition days organised at villages by the health workers are specially designed for community participation and awareness. He stressed that these efforts needed to be supported by other government departments as well as civil society organizations, faith based organisations and volunteers for successful implementation.
General secretary NBCC Rev. Dr. Z. Kheyo said “Healing the bodies and saving souls” had been the slogan of the earlier missionaries. He said that church play important role not only in the faith matter but also in the social and health aspects of its members.
Kheyo said in the techno-advanced medical world one must be well informed and depend on the medical advances to bring healing to the sickness and also educate people to seek help from the medical science.
Catholic Association of Nagaland, Father Charles highlighted its activities across the globe, nation and state and said in Nagaland the church’s Intervention in healthcare began in December 1948 and thereon the missionaries focused on providing basic healthcare to the remotest villages in Nagaland.
He said the Catholic church has considerably contributed to education in the state through the dedication and commitment of the missionaries.
Similarly he said the church and its health mission look forward to build meaningful partnerships with government departments, NGOs and individuals in reaching out to the remotest villages in Nagaland to ensure that every individual had access to quality and affordable healthcare services.
The programme was attended by department of Health & Family Welfare officials, National Health Mission, UNICEF, church leaders from various denominations and others.