Kerala State Poverty Eradication Mission (Kudumbashree

4

KERALA

Santhwanam: Doorstep health check-ups and early detection of lifestyle diseases

Kerala State Poverty Eradication Mission (Kudumbashree)

Background

For the past two decades, Kudumbashree has promoted various livelihood activities among women in the rural and urban areas. The main strategy for livelihood enhancement hinges on raising the capacity of the community network to position itself as a rights-based organization responsible to itself and to the community it serves, and to capitalize on the opportunities that association with local self governments provides. Convergence and integration are cornerstones of this strategy.

About

In Kerala, the government offers several community health care services which are increasingly being established by local self-government and Health departments. However, community healthcare cannot occur in a vacuum. It requires complementary interventions to ensure uptake of services. Given the rise in lifestyle deceases, which

are preventable through preventive measures and early detection, Kudumbashree introduced the Santhwanam Healthcare Project for periodic health check-up and early detection of lifestyle diseases at the door step.

Santhwanam is a collaborative effort of Kudumbashree, Health Action by People (HAP), the latter being an NGO headed by a group of doctors. Women from Kudumbashree families with plus-two level of education or graduation in science are selected for this enterprise. They are given seven days of intensive training on technical inputs and personality development by HAP.. The entrepreneurs are trained in checking the height, body weight, body mass index, blood pressure, blood glucose and cholesterol of people they visit at home to check on their diseases. The medical equipment required for the checkups are supplied by HAP.

Further, every six months Kudumbashree imparts performance improvement training to these entrepreneurs/professionals.. The Santhwanam groups also take part in fairs and festivals, where they get plenty of patients to carry out checkups on and rake in reasonable earnings. . This is in addition to the regular house visits they undertake for periodic checkups. The main benefit of this scheme is that the periodic checkups give individuals a warning about their state of health so that they can go to a hospital in time for further treatment if necessary.

Way Forward

1. Considering the scope of the project, Kudumbashree is in the process of positioning Santhwanam volunteers in all Community Development Society (CDS) in the proportion of minimum 1 volunteer per CDS.

2. Scaling up Santhwanam Care Centres to all districts.

3. More heath checkups will be incorporated as part of Santhwanam.

4. Planning to develop a mobile app through which these entrepreneurs and customers can be linked.