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Aasheesh Sharma
Social responsibility goes back a long way at Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd. In 1979, it recognised the need for a project that would ensure primary healthcare for segments of society that were the least likely to benefit from innovations in medical sciences. This led to the formation of the Ranbaxy Rural Development Trust, which provided healthcare to villagers at their doorstep, through mobile vans.
A logical extension was the formation of the Ranbaxy Community Healthcare Society (RCHS) in 1994. An independent registered society, the RCHS looked toward its parent company for financial support. ``With the largest and most vulnerable group in economically backward areas being the mother and child group, we are focussing on them, dealing specifically with malnutrition, infections and family planning. Through our nine healthcare units, RCHS is providing integrated medical facilities to over several lakh people every year,'' claims a company spokesperson.
Today, RCHS operates nine mobile health care units locatedin the states of Punjab (Mohali, Toansa, Beas and Patiala), Himachal Pradesh (Paonta Sahib and Bhota), Haryana (Sirsa), Madhya Pradesh (Dewas), and Okhla in Delhi.
``RCHS is committed to building the self-dependency of the community by encouraging people's participation, bringing about meaningful social change through their active involvement in its healthcare programmes, '' says Dr R S Bakshi, its chief medical officer. ``An important part of this is bolstering the decision-making freedom of women in issues that affect them directly. Things like determining family size, spacing births, inoculations etc.,'' feels Dr Banoo L Coyaji, chairperson of the society.
``In the past six months, the society has provided integrated healthcare to over 1,00,000 beneficiaries, administering over 78,000 doses of immunisation, providing ante-natal care to nearly 3,354 pregnant women, and counselling over 5,000 couples in family planning,'' informs Bakshi.
Recently, the society undertook a campaign against AIDS. It hasinitiated extensive awareness programmes on the subject among all age groups through handouts, lectures, films, community visits and poster painting competitions.
``Eighty per cent of our population resides in rural areas, and they don't have easy access to basic healthcare. RCHS has been providing healthcare to this strata of the society at their doorstep -- through our mobile vans. The first mobile health unit was activated in district Ropar. Today we have nine vans, each of them well-equipped with infrastructure to perform minor operations like Copper T insertions, ante-natal check-ups, routine lab tests, immunisation and vasectomies. Each van is manned by one doctor (medical officer), one auxiliary nurse midwife (ANM) and a driver. It has 200 volt wiring, proper lights and a gynaecological table to examine patients,'' informs Bakshi.
``When the programme began in 1994, we wanted to tackle basic health hazards like unsafe drinking water, lack of immunisation and ignorance about health issues leading todisease,'' recalls Bakshi. ``We did not want to end up like a dispensary, just distributing pills to the villagers. Our objective was to provide preventive healthcare and create awareness about basic health by giving out complete and accurate information,'' he adds.
Imparting health education through diverse media is an important part of the campaign. ``One of the media used to educate people is audio-visual equipment (a colour television and a VCR) showing documentaries on AIDS prevention and the importance of hygiene and family planning. Another medium is personal counselling. Each doctor is trained to act as a counsellor and impart information about immunisation, medical termination of pregnancy, general hygiene, and child and mother nutrition. This is very important because ignorance about these can lead to critical complications like low birth weight and infant mortality. No government doctor instructs them on these subjects. This medium is supplemented by group discussions on ante-natal care, safedelivery, methods of family planning, etc,'' says Bakshi.
``There is a basic flaw in the government's Safe Motherhood Campaign -- its limited focus. The programme provides healthcare and nutrition to women only during pregnancy, whereas they need nutrition much before that. There is a physiological fall in haemoglobin levels during pregnancy. That is when the government distributes iron and folic acid tablets leading to severe anaemia in some cases. We are concentrating on adolescent girls in the age group of 12-19 years -- trying to build up their body strength, before pregnancy. Severe anaemic cases are referred to government hospitals, though,'' avers Bakshi.
With nine centres in five states, what difficulties did the society face? ``The canvas of the activities being so huge, a big constraint is paucity of funds, though we are being sponsored by Ranbaxy. Today we have nine mobile vans, but the scope of our services has widened beyond the clusters around our plants. We now want to serve the urban slumpopulation and other areas that are not located near our plants. Another problem is the strength of medical social workers. We need more para-medics and finances to pay them,'' answers Bakshi.
``Besides the finances, there were some motivational problems as well. Initially, very few gynaecologists and obstetricians were willing to travel to rural areas despite providing transport and honoraria. To solve this problem, we approached the district medical authorities. The officials sympathetically deputed government medical officers on our mobile vans. Our role was then transformed to managing the visits and displaying their timings prominently in the villages,'' he says.
Elaborating on other RCHS activities, Bakshi says, ``We also manage two government funded family welfare centres. One of them is situated in slum pockets in and around Tehkhand village, South Delhi, addressing the healthcare needs of over 50,000 people. We have intensified our efforts in the slums, but don't have adequate resources to workin large clusters.''
To supplement their efforts, do they collaborate with other like-minded agencies? ``We have close synergies with the community medicine departments of government medical colleges, near our units. Medical interns undergoing rural training help us with their work in preventive and social medicine. Also, we have partners in the non-governmental sector. In Sangam Vihar, we are working closely with CASP-Plan to combat the menace of AIDS. The Nav Jyoti Development Society collaborates with us in the same slum colony to motivate people with its programmes on literacy and income generation. We only provide them the medical back-up there, '' explains Bakshi.
Nutrition of the mother and the child is of special interest to RCHS, ``Due to the popularity of untrained midwives (dais) in villages, many mothers are ignorant about proper child care and nutrition patterns. As a result, 36 per cent of children between the age group 0-1 are malnourished and 70 per cent of these are girl children.Untrained dais don't explain the nitty gritty of late weaning or the relative merits of breastfeeding and bottle-feeding to mothers. Many a time, this leads to infections since milk is a good medium for them. It is knowledge of these health basics that the society wants to disseminate,'' concludes Bakshi.
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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This story was printed from Net Express located at http://www.expressindia.com. Net Express provides a portal to India, with news from The Indian Express and The Financial Express along with sites on travel and tourism, the entertainment industry, the power sector, the environment and much more.
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