Thiruvananthapuram: The state has mandated that every new-born will now be screened for Critical Congenital Heart Disease (CCHD) under the guidelines set by the American Paediatric Association.
With this, Kerala has become the first state in the country to launch universal CCHD screening.
‘Hridyam’ with the National Health Mission has joined hands with the New-Born Foundation to bring down the Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) from 10 to 8. A panel discussion was conducted on Wednesday for a better understanding on the importance and functioning of the Pulse Oximetry, a device for detecting the percentage of oxygen saturation in the blood.
Dr. Anne Granelli, head of cardiology at the NU Hospital (Sweden) and a specialised biomedical scientist, was present at the event to create awareness regarding the concept of necessary screening and early detection.
“A small fraction of abnormalities can be identified at the pre-natal stage through radiology and anomaly scans, but CCHD in most cases requires detection at the post-natal stage and cannot be identified through physical characters,” said additional chief secretary (health) Rajeev Sadanandan.
Health Minister K.K. Shailaja said that currently 46 hospitals had been provided oximetry. These were selected on the basis of their past record of dealing with the number of deliveries.
“Screening will occur within a span of 24 hours as it will be integrated with other screening protocols for convenience. Logistics is a challenging factor so far, and once that is dealt with we would pick up the speed of conducting the process,” said an expert.
The government has taken assistance from hospitals such as Sree Chitra Tirunal, Amrita, Aster, BCMCH and so on to facilitate operations for the increasing number of children. The painless and affordable provision deals with the child’s immunity at the root-level and takes barely 2-3 minutes to be conducted along with providing free surgery services for the poorer if found to be affected.
