GrassRoots Projects

• Pilot Mental Health Project for School Going and Non-School Going Adolescents

‘Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well being and not merely the absence of an infirmity.’ - World Health Organization The Government of Gujarat, with the financial support from Royal Netherlands Government, implemented some pilot projects in the field of Mental Health to assess the mental health needs of the various segments of the society, of which the Mandal was a part. Recognizing the psychological needs of adolescents, the Mandal initiated a project for school going and non-school going adolescents. Though it was for the first time that the issue of community mental health was addressed, the response to this pilot project was very encouraging. To ensure the sustainability of the project interventions, a number of training sessions for the teachers of the participating schools were organized. The focus of the training sessions was identification of common mental health problems and counseling skills. Forty teachers from twenty-five schools attended the training programmes. Under the project a detailed survey for school-going children as well as school dropouts was conducted to understand and identify the need for interventions. The standardized - strength and difficulties questionnaire of the British Health Survey of Chile Mental Health was translated into Gujarati and adopted for the survey. Necessary personal as well as demographic information was included. The efficacy of the questionnaire was tested before its wider use at the field level. The project interventions were coordinated and monitored by the Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. The results of the base line survey in Mental Health ---link to be provided.

• Improving the reproductive status of women of 25 villages of Anand district.

Safe motherhood is still a dream for many women staying in the villages of Anand district of Gujarat State. Many women and children suffer not just due to lack of basic knowledge but also because of accessibility to basic and affordable obstetric healthcare. The Charutar Arogya Mandal, with the support of the British High Commission, New Delhi, launched a two-year project titled “Improving the Reproductive Health Status of Women in 25 villages of Anand District” with the objective of generating awareness, providing essential antenatal care services and developing referral linkages with existing health care providers from the Government and Non-government sectors. The project interventions were largely focused at the adolescents and women of childbearing age group. The selection of the villages were based on criteria, such as linkages with other community-based projects of the Mandal, local collaborating organizations and presence of other health care providers. The Department of Extension Programmes, with the technical support from the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Pediatrics, organized a five-day comprehensive training programme on reproductive health of women. The training programme included important aspects of reproductive health like, nutritional anaemia, menstrual cycle, personal hygiene, child bearing age, high risk symptoms of pregnancy, new born care, referral care, etc. To ensure maximum supervised deliveries and to reduce neonatal and maternal mortality, the Shree Krishna Hospital developed a special Antenatal package for the project beneficiaries, which ensure free antenatal care and highly subsidized normal as well as cesarean section deliveries. With the lessons learned from this project the Mandal felt encouraged to adopt some villages to initiate complete health programmes, which are need based and community oriented with a full back up of the secondary and tertiary care facilities at its health centres and Shree Krishna Hospital. Presently about 26 villages have been identified which lack health infrastructure facilities and have an adverse health profile. The Extension Programme department has identified local women, who have taken the responsibility as community based health providers. An initial training of these workers has been conducted to initiate the maternal and child health care services, to start with. It is planned to initiate other health and developmental programmes, depending on the needs of the community, at a later date.