Support Women and Children to access Good Healthcare!

Every child deserves a healthy start in life. And every woman deserves access to quality healthcare.

In India nearly 35,000 women die every year due to pregnancy and child-birth related complications. 

57% Women of reproductive age (15-49 years) are estimated to be anaemic.

33% of the disease burden among adults (young parents or to be parents) in India is attributed to unhealthy habits during adolescence

Globally 1 in 3 women and girls are affected by violence and 32% of ever-married women in India have reported partner violence.

Rapid urbanisation and overburdened infrastructure creates low accessibility and affects quality of health and nutrition services in urban informal settlements. Most of the above issues are preventable and are mainly due to the lack of awareness of healthy practices and poor access to quality healthcare services.

Source: National Health Family Survey-5, World Health Organization 2017

It is said that the health of the child and family begins with a woman. If the woman adopts healthy practices the family will also remain healthy. SNEHA’s intervention primarily focuses on women and to bring in behavior change leading to a lasting impact. While doing so we understand there are various factors impacting the health of women and children and hence we have designed a holistic intervention that focuses on the following:

1. Identifying pregnant women at an early stage and supporting them in accessing antenatal, perinatal and postnatal services from healthcare providers to ensure that they deliver safe and healthy babies.
2. Working with children in the age group of 0-6 years to improve infant and child feeding practices, uptake of immunisation and illness management.
3. Counseling caregivers and decision-makers in the family on the importance of balanced diet, dietary diversity and healthy practices to ensure good health of the woman and child.
4. In the communities we work in generally, the husband/father is the decision maker in the family. We work towards making men an active support system for improved health of the women and children in their family and the community.
5. Supporting the healthcare providers i.e. the health posts and public hospitals by helping strengthen their services and bridging the gap between them and the community, to improve the delivery of services.    
6. We provide counseling services to women undergoing violence or depression and also support them with medical or legal help as required by them.

SNEHA is a step towards bridging the health equity gap amongst people living in urban poverty, with a special focus on women and children.

Significant Progress so far:

• 48608 Pregnant women with potential complications assisted through referral networks (2016-22)
• 8160 Youth reached through life-skills and health education programmes (2016-22)
• 24420 Survivors of violence counselled for psycho-social support and advanced mental health counselling (2016-22)
• 4765 Mumbai Police personnel trained to respond to survivors of violence (2016-22)
• 86% survivors of violence accessing counselling services reported a reduction in violence and distress levels (2021-22)
• 99% of antenatal care clinics functional in project areas

The following story of Saba reflects the challenges faced by women and families in the communities where we work, as our on-ground staff provides information and counseling to change behaviours and attitudes to improve the health of vulnerable women and children.

Changing minds through care

Saba was three months pregnant when SNEHA’s field staff member met her during the door-to-door visit. Already under treatment for white discharge and irregular menstruation related issues at a nearby hospital, Saba was also found to be mildly anaemic at 10.5 g/dl.

We faced stiff resistance from Saba’s husband, because of which we were unable to reach her as Saba delivered in the seventh month of pregnancy. The baby was kept in a glass incubator and when discharged from the hospital after 10 days, he weighed 1.3 kg.

During the home visits following the delivery, our field staff member educated Saba about food, health and nutrition practices such as kangaroo mother care, exclusive breastfeeding and maintaining hygiene to ensure better health for the mother and child.

We continued with anthropometry of the baby which indicated improvement in height (57.3 cm) and weight (4.36 kg) measurements. When her husband saw his child’s progress, he was convinced of the benefits of SNEHA’s interventions.

Our continued efforts have shown positive results with the child now shifted to the normal category and the family continues to follow healthy practices to ensure the well-being of the mother and child.