Provide Healthcare to 40,000 Rural Indian Women

The World Diabetes Day is a global campaign created by International Diabetes Federation to the draw attention to issues of paramount importance to the diabetes. This day is celebrated internationally on 14^th November each year. The theme this year was “Women and Diabetes- Our right to a healthy future”. The campaign was centered on promoting affordable and equitable access for women at risk or living with Diabetes to medicines, diagnostic and treatment technologies and self management knowledge for ensuring a healthy and productive life. The key messages of the campaign were following:

-          All women with diabetes require affordable and equitable access to care and education to better manage their diabetes and improve their health outcomes.

-          Pregnant women require improved access to screening, care and education to achieve positive health outcomes for mother and child.

-          Women and girls are key agents in the adoption of healthy lifestyles to improve the health and wellbeing of future generations.

The World Diabetes Day-2017 celebration at Ashray was also designed keeping in mind the above theme. On 14^th November 2017, we organized a series of awareness lectures on “Diabetes in Women” and a Diabetes screening camp for women and children of Siddhada village, Santalpur Taluka. The activities were conducted in the premises of Siddhada Government School. Following activities were done as a part of the celebration:

-          Designed and distributed nearly 2000 IEC leaflets among the women and children of the village through the Health Workers.

-          Conducted a series of lectures on “Diabetes in Women” highlighting symptoms and signs of Diabetes, early detection of Diabetes and Gestational Diabetes Mellitus, prevention of type-2 Diabetes and nutritional care.

-          Organized Diabetes screening camp for villagers in which physical examination and Random Blood Sugar (RBS) test was done by a team lady medical officer and nurses. A total of 156 people attended the camp; RBS was checked for 129 people.

An awareness meeting on importance of Ante Natal Care was conducted in Korda village by our community health worker with pregnant women of the village. We conducted the meeting in the classroom of a local school. The school authorities look forward to the development of the village as a whole and so they agreed with providing us the space required for the meeting. Our health worker had started sensitizing these women about the meeting 20 days prior to the meeting.  On the said day, to much of our delight all the pregnant women in the village turned out for the meeting. The health worker, who is trained in counseling talked about the Ante Natal Checkups; their importance, details of services provided at the local health facilities and 4 golden keys of Ante Natal Care namely early registration at the health centre, going for minimum 3-4 antenatal checkups, taking 2 tetanus toxoid injections and consuming 100 iron folic acid tablets. Using audio-visual tools like Projector and Speakers, these women were shown short movies and videos on the these topics.  They were also taught to recognise danger signals which can occur during pregnancy; such as bleeding, high blood pressure, fever and others, upon which they should seek immediate medical assistance. 

Many of these women will be followed by our health worker throughout their pregnacy and post birth to ensure all the necessary care and support is given to them for a safe and happy motherhood.