Will the government’s new mother-child tracking system (MCTS) improve things?

The central government on Friday launched a unique mother-child tracking system which will follow the health of a child from birth to five years of age. The Mother Child Tracking System (MCTS) is a web-based service that records details of pregnant women and children up to five years and also tracks delivery of due services to them.

The aim of MCTS is to ensure that every woman gets complete and quality pre-and-post-natal care and every child receives a full range of immunisation services, Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said here while launching the service. Regular text messages would also be sent to pregnant women and parents of children to make them aware of the services due to them so they could get them.

Azad said the tracking system would help gather valuable data from the states on health schemes and facilities reaching beneficiaries. Besides monitoring delivery of mother-child health services, the MCTS system would also communicate with the health workers, pregnant women and parents of young children on their mobiles. It will also generate awareness about their entitlements under various government programmes and schemes.

Source: IANS