Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has called for proposals on improving health of children in tribal areas, to achieve Millennium Development Goals 4 (MDG 4). About 635 tribal groups and subgroups including 75 primitive tribes live in India. There is a paucity of comprehensive health research among the tribal populations of India. Various communicable and non-communicable diseases, nutritional deficiency diseases,genetic disorders like G6PD deficiency, sickle cell anemia are prevalent among the tribal population. Infant mortality, child mortality, proportion of malnourished children, anemia are also high among tribal children.

Although infant mortality rate and child mortality rates have declined substantially over the years, the rates are still very high among tribal children. Eight to nine percent of the population are scheduled tribes, 14 percent of all under-five deaths and 23 percent of deaths in the 1-4 age group are among the tribal children.

The Council in its proposal accords high priority in supporting and promoting research aimed at improving child survival to achieve MDG 4 goals. Realizing the urgent need for initiating area specific, tribe specific, action oriented health research in accordance with the felt needs of the tribal communities, multicenter / single center projects:basic research, clinical and epidemiological / operation research / implementation research with high translation potential are invited from eligible                   scientists/researchers on the following priority areas of national relevance.

Scientists in regular employment in the medical colleges, post-graduate institutions, universities, recognized research institutes and development laboratories and NGOs are eligible to apply. Applications from non-governmental agencies should provide documentary evidence of registration (Registered with the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR), Government of India). The application proposal should be submitted online following ICMR guidelines, that are given on the ICMR website. The deadline for the same is April 10, 2013.

The call is to invite proposals addressing research questions on any one or several of the following areas related to improving health of children in tribal areas:

• Assessing health needs of children in tribal areas
• Improving delivery of evidence based interventions for maternal, newborn and child health through continuum of care approach
• Developing linkages for referral care for newborns and under five children within existing health care system
• Strategy to improve coverage of evidence based child survival interventions within the existing health care system
• Situation analysis of health work force in primary and referral health care setting, creating enabling environment for health care providers (pre service training, skill building and sustaining skills, supportive supervision)
• Developing tools / inbuilt system for monitoring and evaluation of various health care programs
• Use of modem technology for improving quality of care, vital registration,communication among health care service providers
• Strategies for empowering communities / tribal women for improving health care seeking behavior for sick children
• Creating awareness about common preventable disorders and maintaining registers for such diseases for future course of action