What is Chaddha Committe?
In the mid 20th century India was struggling with the spread of communicable and infectious diseases. The main disease i.e. malaria is spreading rapidly in India. It has become a major burden on Indias health care system. To deal with the malaria, India launches National Malaria Eradication Programme (NMEP).
This program was success but when the most of diseases are cure and prevented, the problem arise as what if diseases reappeared or how to continuously monitor the malaria surveillance. The malaria maintenance team is separate team than the health services provided in the hospital. So, this became a cost expensive for to manage and unsustainable.
The government has create chaddha committe to find the solution for it. And integrate the malaria services into the normal health care services.
What are the Recommendations of the Chaddha Committe?
Integration of Malaria surveillance programm into the primary health center servicesÂ
This recommendation proposed that the instead of putting a separate team for malaria services, give this task to the primary health center workers. During the routine working in their area they will also look for the case detection of malaria and provide appropriate treatment.
Creation of Basic Health Worker (BHW)
This committe propsed to introduced the Basic Health Worker that will serve for 10,000 population. They will work as multipurpose worker.
This worker will do multiple tasks in the phc so that is why they called as multipurpose worker instead of just doing the malaria vigilance programme.
Functions of multipurpose worker:-
- To motivate couple for family planning method
- To do regular home visit and detect malaria symptoms
- To promote immunization
- To provide health education
- To detect any communicable disease
Improved supervision on the Basic Health WorkerÂ
The committe recommend Family planning health assistants. They were responsible for monitoring the basic health worker.
What are the criticism the chaddha committe faced?
The single most criticism is the, chaddha committe has overburdened the basic health worker throught their multipurpose role. There have been confusion and low work due to dual role of malaria vigilance and family planning functions. This functions were separated in the mukharjee committe. However, chaddha committe recommedation to integrate the malaria into the routine case detection is invaluable recommendation.