Best Practice Award to SUHAM Trust
The Sustainable Healthcare Advancement (SUHAM) Trust bagged the best practice award under the health category during the HCL partners meeting held on 20th – 21st January 2020, at India Habitat Centre, Delhi. The Trust was selected among the partner organizations who are implementing health interventions with the support of the HCL Foundation. The award was presented for the best practice on building grassroots health governance towards fostering grassroots democracy in a sustainable way and promoting a strong demand stream for ensuring accessibility. The slum health governance was promoted in six slums of Madurai urban where significant works have been carried out by the governance in bridging the community with the public health system and ICDS. Significant performance is achieved in the impact of the project by involving the slum health governance, especially anemia, child nutrition, 1000 days’ care, non-communicable diseases, de-addiction and leveraging services from the system.
Case study
Slum Health Governance: A catalyst for development change in Nethaji Nagar at Madurai City
The Self Health Governance was promoted in Nethaji Nagar in March 2017 to fulfill the health needs of the community with self-management. Initially, five members from the local community were instrumental in promoting this governance. Over three months’ period, they were able to convince the entire 121 households to promote adolescent girls’ groups, mothers’ clubs, etc. The m-health project supported them to introduce to PHCs and ICDS centers for leveraging of services where the services are inaccessible before. Now Urban Health Nurse and ICDS worker is part of this governance and urban youth are playing a greater role in making entire slum environmentally hygiene. The members visit every household and educate them on health, nutrition, and sanitation and visit girls’ and mothers’ clubs. Last year the eviction process had been carried out by Madurai City Corporation since there was an encroachment area in the slum. The governance took responsibility and smoothen the process between the community and the Corporation. There was a significant improvement in the status of anemia, child nutrition, NCD screening, de-addiction, etc. As per interim evaluation after implementation of two years of the project, 42.2% of girls and 57.6% of antenatal mothers entirely come out from anemia. The governance took efforts to reach out to all girls and women to undergo Hb assessment. Likewise, the anthropometric measurements are being taken among children, mothers, and girls for monitoring their growth and development and found significant improvement in underweight and BMI respectively.
It was found that the eligible children were not coming to the Anganwadi center before the intervention. This was the scenario in all urban slums of Madurai. Now 92% of eligible children visiting Anganwadi center regularly and it’s been motivated and monitored by the governance. The project supported the Anganwadi center for improvement in infrastructures. The urban health nurse also visiting regularly and involved in screening patients for Hb, breast and cervical cancer, referring severe cases, etc. The governance was appreciated for their tremendous work on counseling addicted patients and families. 18 cases were referred and three of them come out from addiction and saved thousands of rupees every month. This governance becomes a model for other slums in Madurai. This governance becomes a resource team for self-management across the project and other regions.
Slum Health Governance Meeting at Nethaji Nagar, Madurai Urban