A vital boost for rural healthcare

While the government has rolled out infrastructure for health care that reaches the entire country, in several parts of the country its actual reach in remote villages continues to be unsatisfactory. Recognizing this reality, the government too has been exploring various options of improving the situation from time to time. Several approaches and models created by teams of doctors and other health professionals have been tried in this context, including the widely appreciated work of several renowned doctors.

- BHARAT DOGRA

One such widely discussed health initiative is that of a voluntary organization Basic Healthcare Services (BHS). This initiative, which can be said to be based on the AMRIT approach or AMRIT clinics, started in 2012 in south Rajasthan. Over the last 13 years or so its work has steadily consolidated and although it continues to struggle with challenges old and new, its achievements resulting in saving thousands of lives have been widely appreciated.

Dr. Pavitra Mohan, co-founder and director of BHS had earlier led the child health programme of UNICEF in India. He emphasizes three aspects of any such initiative. Firstly, the health needs of the poorest should be prioritized, or the ‘last person’ should get the ‘first priority’. Secondly, the initiative should be based on recognizing the right to health of all people. Thirdly, such an initiative should be highly participative so that the community’s real and priority needs can be properly understood by all those involved in the health initiative.

Dr Sanjana Mohan, another co-founder, (see photograph) emphasizes that in such people-based health initiatives dignity and trust are very important. The success of such initiatives, she says, should be seen more in terms of their more durable and lasting impacts, not just temporary gains.

BHS has six clinics in Udaipur and Salumbur districts, most of these in the midst of villages with tribal communities constituting most of the population, with high levels of poverty, malnutrition, disease burden and migrant labour. After considerable discussion it was decided that clinics would be led by nurses, helped by the weekly visit of one or two physicians and round-the-clock phone consultations with BHS doctors. The nurses, with adequate qualifications improved by BHS training, are selected, broadly speaking, from within the communities with which they work.