UP To Sign Agreement with Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Lucknow: The Uttar Pradesh government will sign an agreement with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which will provide technical, management and programme design support in the health sector.

Co-chairman of the foundation, Bill Gates, today met UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav at his official residence here and offered his foundation's support to work in partnership on Health and Development issues in the state. The MoU will be signed in two months.

The foundation will provide support in the maternal, neonatal and child health-care, vaccination and other health and agriculture-related programmes. The decision in this regard was taken during the meeting.

The state government shall provide support as per sanctioned plans to achieve the objective and to scale up best approaches, an official release issued here said.

During the meeting, Akhilesh appreciated the works being done by the Gates Foundation in different districts of the state in the area of health through projects like Sure start, Manthan and Urban Health Initiative, the release said.

Yadav also apprised Gates of the efforts being started by his government to tackle the poor health indicators of mother mortality rates, infant mortality rate, low level of complete immunisation, high malnutrition among children, high fertility rate among others.

Apart from these issues, he also discussed with Gates the problems and challenges of vector borne diseases like Tubercolsis, Japanese encephalitis and acute encephalitis syndrome in certain regions of the state.