The pilot project to create a digital health profile of Telangana citizens is expected to take longer than expected. A deadline of 40 days had been set to wrap it up in Mulugu and Rajanna Sircilla districts where it was launched on March 5 this year. However, the pilot has been pushed back due to non-availability of all members on the day the health staff visited their homes and issues with equipment for drawing blood samples anong other reasons. Now, the revised deadline is set for May-end.
Senior officials of the Health department said the Health Profile project would be expanded to the other 31 districts only after ironing out the issues in implementation in the two districts. They reasoned that there are teething issues since it is the first-of-its-kind project in the entire country.
Mulugu’s District Medical and Health Officer (DMHO) Allam Appaiah said that though their staff is going door-to-door, they are not able to meet all members of a family on the same day. Some of them are unavailable as they go out to attend daily works for their livelihood.
“If there are four people in a family, they take turns to attend daily work. And some go into forest to collect forest produce. So we are not able to meet all members of one household on the same day. But our staff is going to remote parts on multiple days to try and meet everyone,” said Dr Appaiah.
DMHO of Rajanna Sircilla A. Suman Mohan Rao also cited the same reason and said that their staff goes back and forth to cover all members of a household.
Health staff in Mulugu have collected details of around 90,000 persons out of the estimated 2.3 lakh target population. In Rajanna-Sircilla, 1.43 lakh people out of estimated 3.8 lakh have been covered so far.
As part of the project, health staff is going door-to-door to collect health details of everyone above 18 years. The details that would be collected includes date of birth, height, weight, pulse rate, blood group, blood pressure, diabetes etc. People are also asked if they have any long term diseases and treatment opted. Blood and urine samples are collected for tests.
All the details would be uploaded online and people would be given a health card on the spot. The information and tests help to know if people are at threat of any serious health condition and take precautionary measures.
