The intrepid aspiration of a visionary pays its rewards. Birth Defects Registry of India a public surveillance system instituted and managed by Prof. Suresh to collect and analyse data on congenital abnormalities happening in the antenatal period to one year of life not only wins WHO acclaim but also the recognition of State Planning Commission. SPC takes BDRI’s partnership to document incidence of birth defects in Tiruvallur Health District. The delivery management team of all the PHCs are going to be trained by BDRI team for this 6 months project.

On 18th of Feb. the Training Program for the first batch was conducted at Mediscan premises. Auxillary Nurse Midwifes, 15 of them from Tiruvallur Primary Health Centres attended the program.
Interactive sessions were the highlight of the program. Dr. Indrani Suresh in her address said, these interactions revealed the ANMs are already informed about some of the common birth defects and this training would calibrate their potential to identify and document birth defects in a more disciplined manner.

Prof. Suresh recalled in his talk that Mediscan partnered with NRHM, for the pregnancy ultrasound training program in 15 districts of Tamil Nadu and now due to antenatal detection of gross birth abnormalities birth of babies with such defects has come down dramatically.

In a span of one year 940 birth defects were detected, like this when BDR becomes a public interest program supported by the government, attitude of the people will also change and babies with treatable birth defects will get immediate medical attention and that is my wish he said.