‘Chetna’, a new healthcare project launched by Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP), has so far covered more than 4,500 people living in and around the steel city.
According to RSP sources, commenced in March 2010, the project aims at providing treatment to people affected with anaemia and counselling for Thalassemia and Sickle Cell patients.
Cases of Sickle Cell anaemia are found more in Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Maharashtra while Thalassemia is prevalent throughout the country with differing intensity, the sources said.
RSP, under its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), has so far organised 22 health camps with the help of an NGO “Sankalpa” in different model steel villages as well as educational institutes where screening of anaemia is being carried out.
Officials of CSR department and medical staff and doctors of RSP-run Ispat General Hospital (IGH) have screened the anaemia positive cases by advanced medical techniques to look for Thalassemia and Sickle Cell anaemia as well as Haemoglobinopathy.
A high performance Liquid Chromatograph machine has been set up at IGH for this purpose that automatically generates the blood test reports from the available blood samples, the sources said.
Negative cases for Thalassemia and Sickle Cell anaemia are being treated with iron and vitamin supplement while positive cases are being counselled and more than 200 cases of Sickle Cell have been identified so far in these camps, the sources said.
Both Thalassemia and Sickle Cell are genetic diseases and the carrier of the diseases need to know that if they marry another carrier of the same diseases, then the offspring are more prone to be effected with the diseases.
So the important objective of Project ‘Chetna’ is to identify these carriers, make them aware about the severity and discourage them from marrying another carrier of the disease which can go a long way in preventing spread of these serious diseases, the sources added.