Volunteering For Rural Healthcare in India

With #WorldHealthDay almost here, let’s focus our attention to Volunteers working for Health based causes.

The NGO, Rural Health Care Foundation who had participated in the iVolunteer Awards,  has a clear mission to eradicate the lack of health care facilities in rural India by creating a chain of primary health care units that offer high quality, affordable outpatient care in low income, densely populated regions, where health care delivery by the state is sparse.

With this vision they set up primary health care centers in the remotest corners of India, replicating our current service delivery model. They intend to scale up and establish 25 additional centers in the next five years in the most rural areas of West Bengal, and over 100 new centers in the next ten years, throughout the length and breadth of our country.
The provision for a mobile hospital equipped to provide basic medical services at the doorstep of the poorest is also envisioned.

So how do Volunteers Help?

“Volunteers are important to us because they bring to the cause greater passion, energy and ideas, which allows us to maximize the impact of our efforts and help us in bringing about a higher degree of change.”

Over 50 percent of the medicines lying in Indian homes are unused, many of which also expire. The intended impact of this programme was to collect unused unexpired medicines from homes in Calcutta and distribute the same to needy people through RHCF’s primary health care centers located across different districts of West Bengal. This medicine collection drive was also accompanied by a fund raising drive, as funds were collected to provide medicines to the poor or sponsor cataract surgeries for the elderly. The larger intention of the programme was to create awareness among people about avenues for donation of funds and medicines towards those who lack the necessary resources to avail quality medical care
The role of the volunteers was to make a field assessment of the functioning of each primary health care center run by RHCF, identify loopholes in functioning and suggest ways to cap these operational loopholes along with devising systems and processes for a more efficient functioning.

The volunteers need to gather an in-depth knowledge of the mechanisms that are in place at RHCF and suggest a road-map to convert these into web based processes.

We wish RHCF all the very best on their noble venture!