The Central Government-appointed Community Based Monitoring (CBM) Project under the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) has come out with a preliminary report on the functioning of health care infrastructure in rural Thane. CBM project is a key to acquiring health rights for the rural population. It was started in April 2007 in five districts of Maharashtra including Thane rural. The report will be discussed with government officials in a public hearing at the zilla parishad level. "When we started, the village gram panchayat refused to attend the meetings, saying they would not do so unless they got a letter from the Block Development Officer. There was absolutely no cooperation from them,' said Devi Tai Kurbude, president of the CBM in Jawahar taluka. "But now everybody comes up to us with their problems. We explain to villagers their basic rights as patients,' she said. The village health and sanitation committee (VHSC) from 45 villages in Thane and also a part of the CBM, conducted the study at village level. Some of the findings of these village level committees show that in many villages, auxiliary nurse midwives (ANM) are not found at work and are not accountable to anyone as there are no doctors there. "In Ek Laheri village in Murbad for example, there is no ANM present at the sub-centre. It is posing a big problem as the villagers have to rely on other sub-centres in nearby village or walk kilometers to go to the primary health centres,' said Indiavi Tai from Vananikitan, a local NGO in Murbad. "For 16 months at a stretch at the anganwadi in Dahanu block, workers did not weigh children for malnutrition. The quality of food served for supplementary nutrition is not good. Self help groups serving food in anganwadis are not given payment on time,' said Brian Lobo from Kashtakari Sanghatana.Apart from doctors not coming to work, there is shortage of medicines and injections, especially for snake and dog bites. Various innovative tools were used to evaluate the health services given in these areas. In some villages, villagers in charge of the CBM are given coloured report cards with certain parameters on qualities of health services and availability of service providers and drugs. " The final conclusion is drawn on the filled report cards and every three months it is evaluated. The report card is then pasted at the sub-centre or at PHC level. Along with the report card, a village health calendar program is devised where they decide the days when the ANM will visit the villages she is assigned,' said Dr Nitin Jaadav, representative of SATHI, State nodal NGO for the CBM project.