SAANS Initiative

Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare has launched SAANS, a campaign aimed at reducing child mortality due to pneumonia, which contributes to around 15% deaths annually of children under the age of five.

SAANS

• SAANS stands for ‘Social Awareness and Action to Neutralise Pneumonia Successfully’.
• It aims to mobilise people to protect children from pneumonia, and train health personnel and other stakeholders to provide prioritised treatment to control the disease.
• Under the campaign, a child suffering from pneumonia can be treated with pre-referral dose of anti-biotic amoxicillin by ASHA workers.
• Health and wellness centres can use pulse oximeter (device to monitor oxygen saturation) to identify low oxygen levels in the blood of a child, and if required, treat him by use of oxygen cylinders.

Pneumonia deaths in India

• As per HMIS data, under-five mortality rate in the country is 37 per 1000 live births, of which 5.3 deaths are caused due to pneumonia.
• The government aims to achieve a target of reducing pneumonia deaths among children to less than three per 1,000 live births by 2025.
• The HMIS data for 2018-19 ranked Gujarat second in the number of child deaths due to pneumonia, after Madhya Pradesh.
• The State ranked fifth in infant mortality due to pneumonia.