MOU shall be signed within two months between the Government of Uttar Pradesh and Bill & Melinda Foundation

The co-chairman of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Mr. Bill Gates met Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Mr. Akhilesh Yadav at his official residence in Lucknow today and offered his Foundation’s support to work in partnership on Health and Development issues in the State.
During the meeting the Chief Minister appreciated the works being done by the Gates Foundation in different districts of Uttar Pradesh in the area of Health through projects like Sure Start, Manthan and Urban Health Initiative. He also apprised him of the efforts being started by the present Government after its formation to tackle the poor health indicators of Mother Mortality Rates, Infant Mortality Rate, Low level of complete Immunization, High Malnutrition among children, High fertility rate etc. Apart from these issues, he also discussed with Gates the problems and challenges of vector borne diseases like TB, JE and AES in certain regions of the state.
Mr. Yadav suggested him that the state should be supported in terms of technical knowledge to the state’s efforts in tackling health related challenges by experimenting with new and innovative methods for effective behavior changes, delivery of services and organization and management of health systems, including supporting innovative ICT based solutions including Telemedicine and capacity building of grassroots level health workers in stead of providing monetary funding to the state. He also stated that the time has come for the Foundation to consider a comprehensive and long term programme which addresses the Maternal and Child Health issues in the State in a holistic manner.
Mr. Bill Gates assured him of full support by the Foundation to develop innovative solution and to provide catalytic, technical, managerial and advocacy support to the Government. He also indicated the Foundation’s keen interest to develop partnerships in some of the priority areas like Maternal and Neonatal Health, Nutrition, Child health particularly routine immunization coverage, introduction of New Life Saving Vaccines and the consolidation of the gains against Polio, Family Planning through increasing access to and uptake of modern contraceptives. He also offered the State Government to work in field of agriculture and also developing financial services for the poor by expanding digital payment systems into poor and rural communities, and connecting those payments to enhanced savings, credit and insurance services.
It was decided that a memorandum of understanding (MOU) shall be signed within two months between the Government of Uttar Pradesh and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, with the objective that the Gate Foundation shall provide technical, management and programme design support in the maternal, neonatal and child health, vaccination and other health and agriculture related programmes. The State Government shall provide support as per sanctioned government plans to achieve the objective and to scale up best approaches.
On this occasion senior cabinet ministers Mr. Shivpal Singh Yadav, Mr. Ambika Choudhary, Mr. Ahmad Hasan, Mr. Raghuraj Pratap Singh, minister of state (independent charge) Mr. Arvind Singh Gope and minister of state Mr. Abhishek Mishra. deputy chairman state planning commission Mr. N.C. Vajpayee, chief secretary Mr. Javed Usmani, principal secretary to the Chief Minister Mr. Rakesh Garg, principal secretary (health) Mr. Sanjay Agrawal, principal secretary (agriculture) Mr. Rajeev Kapur, secretary to the Chief Minister Mr. Alok Kumar and other persons were also present.

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