On November 16, 2019 the union minister of health and family welfare (MoH&FW) Dr. Harsh Vardhan launched “SAANS” campaign in Gandhinagar, Gujarat during the inauguration of 6th National Summit on Good, Replicable practices and innovations. It was a 3-day event, held from November 16-18, 2019.
Aim: SAANS which is in short of ‘Social Awareness and Action to Neutralise Pneumonia Successfully‘ was launched with the aim of reducing child mortality due to pneumonia. It aims to mobilise people to protect children from the disease and to train health personnel and other stakeholders in controlling the disease. 
Key Points:
i.Web portal & coffee table book launched: A web portal for home based care of children including newborn visited by ASHA was launched during the event. The portal will be used to monitor the progress of programs regarding home visits by ASHAs and referral of sick newborns. A coffee table book documenting the good and replicable practices was also launched during the summit.
ii.Govt health targets: The govt. has the aim of reducing Pneumonia deaths in children to less than 3% per 1000 live births by 2025.
iii.Awareness campaign: A mass awareness campaign has also been planned to be launched for pneumonia prevention, based on breastfeeding and age appropriate complementary feeding.
iv.Treatment under SAANS: A child with pneumonia will be treated with pre-referral dose of antibiotic amoxicillin by Accredited Social Health Activist(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.
v.Pneumonia deaths: Pneumonia contributes for 15% deaths annually to children under the age of 5. As per Health Management Information System (HMIS) data, under five mortality rate in the country is 37 per 1000 live birth. Of this, 5.3 deaths are caused due to pneumonia.
- HMIS data: Gujarat ranked second in terms of child mortality due to Pneumonia as per HMIS data for 2018-2019. Madhya pradesh topped the list in child deaths due to pneumonia.
vi.Members present: Minister of State(MoS) for H&FW, Ashwini Kumar Choubey; Chief Minister(CM) of Gujarat, Vijay Rupani; Deputy. CM & Minister of H&FW of Gujarat, Nitinbhai Ratilal Patel; and Vinod K Paul, Member (Health), National Institute for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog at Gandhinagar (Gujarat) were also present at the event.
