Remedy: Public Health Initiatives
Studies have shown that diabetes and hypertension prevalence is high in middle and old age across all geographical areas and socio-demographic groups in India. Prevalence of hypertension among young adults is higher than previously thought. A person with diabetes and high blood pressure is four times as likely to develop heart disease than someone who does not have either of the conditions.
The extended pandemic where exposure to the SARS-COV-2 virus infection may have significant long term health impact, has increased the burden on the public health infrastructure, particularly magnified in marginalized rural communities.
The mission of the Remedy program is to ensure equitable and sustained primary healthcare access for highly marginalized rural communities and reduce non-communicable diseases in vulnerable communities via preventive, curative and palliative healthcare services. This directly addresses the UN SDG of “reducing premature mortality from noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) by one-third by 2030”.
The key components of the primary healthcare program include:
- Developing a detailed mapping of households, family members, demographics, health risks, health seeking behaviors in each of the identified villages.
- Conducting early screening of health risks of rural, disadvantaged populations.
- Operating mobile health clinics with qualified medical practitioners at a predictable, periodic cadence in identified villages.
- Skilling and employing women from the community to conduct mapping, enumeration, field education and early screening activities. We have 17 frontline health workers from 29 villages that we work with who we have specifically trained and employed.
- Educating on positive life-style practices that can help prevent non-communicable diseases.
Via this comprehensive public health program – OBLF covers 29 remote, rural villages with a combined population of greater than 13000 people.
The 3 targeted outcomes of this program are:
- Early Screening, Detection and Treatment of Non-Communicable Diseases – thus ensuring sustained clinical management of the disease, ultimately leading to reduction of preventable cardio-vascular diseases.
- Reduction in the Out-of-Pocket healthcare expenditure for those covered by OBLF’s program
- Increase the percentage of people who are detected with NCDs – as a percentage of the overall population.
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