Docs For Docs Alliance - Health For India Fellowship 2021 - Help Us Provide Healthcare Access To Rural India

Quality healthcare access is still a privilege for rural India, which makes up about two-thirds of our population. Only 13% of the people in rural India have access to a primary health centre, 33% to a sub-center and 9.6% to a hospital. Various communities in the interiors of India remain fraught with health inequalities and are disproportionately vulnerable in conditions such as the coronavirus pandemic. This, in turn, increases the burden of disease on the community and adversely impacts livelihoods dependent largely on physical labor intensive activities, such as farming.

AarogyaSeva’s Health for India Fellows serve small village communities across - Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Assam and Odisha - where such issues continue to persist. Healthcare systems in these communities are usually only rooted in traditional knowledge or superstition.

For people who want to rely on modern medicine, they have to travel punishing distances to the nearest cities by when it is too late, especially in cases of chronic illnesses, complicated deliveries and dire injuries. Morbidity and mortality continue to remain high even for diseases where effective treatment exists owing to inaccessibility and impaired last mile delivery of care. Weak healthcare structures coupled with fractured transportation systems have the potential of crippling these communities with an unpresented burden of disease, especially when confronted with the likes of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Health for India (HFI) is a one-year primary care fellowship program that aims to confront health inequities in vulnerable populations and underserved communities through volunteerism to create an inclusive, sustainable, and de-commodified health ecosystem.

HFI handpicks a diverse network of committed and passionate primary care providers and health leaders who will form the core of this community-centric ecosystem, this is especially vital in the post Covid-19 world. The fellows will work towards improving access to health and healthcare in the community they are placed in and engage with all stakeholders to strengthen the ecosystem they are working to create. The presence of an HFI fellow is vital for the communities that we serve in the interiors of India where access to sustained clinical care remains a great challenge.

We aim to impact 6000+ households within a span of 1 year by facilitating:

Access to Free Quality Healthcare: Our services are decided based on a baseline assessment of the health needs of each region and are provided by adopting best practices for the population being served. Each location will have a well-equipped OneHealth Centre that will function with - (i) a qualified doctor (fellow), a nurse, a health worker and (ii) primary care equipment & medicines. The centre will provide quality primary care and basic obstetric services (OPD and observational IPD) and serve as the first point of contact for evaluation, emergency management and facilitated referral of medical/surgical emergencies. 

A community health worker program that is culture informed and integrative is an essential limb of the OneHealth Centre Model. Through this, we aim to engage community members to ensure that decisions are participatory and informed, health seeking behavior and self reliance through health education is promoted and traditional healthcare knowledge is respected and incorporated in this holistic model of care. 

Community Health Development: The HFI fellow and his/her team are going to directly work on health system strengthening, stakeholder engagement - from the children of the community to the elderly and exploring sustainable health delivery models. All of which have been found to be integral in community development as a whole. Allowing for holistic development of school going children through health screenings and health education modules, better care for the elderly, menstruators and pregnant women.

Our impact is multi-fold, an HFI fellow can change not only the outlook of the community about healthcare, but the community itself for the better.