Shiban believes that in health care, responsibility precedes right and inculcating responsibility towards their own health empowers the individual, ultimately benefitting the community as a whole.

This past year Shiban spent his time……

Shiban writes for www.3quarksdaily.com and his articles have appeared in ‘Mail Today’ from Delhi.

Save a Mother participated in 9 CLA (village organization) meetings and 5 BLA (block level) meetings.
Periodic field visits to program areas

Save a Mother’s Founder and Chief Volunteer, Dr. Shiban Ganju, co-authored a paper entitled, “Financing Healthcare for all: challenges and opportunities” in the January issue of The Lancet.¹ This paper addresses shortcomings in health care coverage and finance and makes recommendations for policy responses required to make healthcare affordable for all in India.

Here’s a summary:

Key Challenges:

Opportunities:

Key Recommendations:

Financing health care for all: challenges and opportunities. Kumar AS, Chen LC, Choudhury M, Ganju S, Mahajan V, Sinha A, Sen A. Lancet. Jan 10, 2011.

Save A Mother: January 1^st, 2008 through June 30^th, 2010

We expanded to two new districts with the help of local NGOs, who wanted to add a health care component to their existing activities. 49 women attended the 3-day induction training in Chikballapur district of Karnataka and 31 women attended the induction training in Mijwan in Azamgarh district of Uttar Pradesh. We are closely monitoring the progress in the new districts to validate the applicability of our program.

As of the end of February 2010, our activists are working in more than 700 villages in five districts of Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka. We plan to expand our work to more villages of these districts and consolidate our work for the rest of 2010.

• Ten one-day refresher trainings were conducted in eight blocks of Uttar Pradesh during December ’09. A total of 83 Swasthya Sakhis (Health Activists) received the refresher trainings.
• We conducted a three-day induction training of Swasthya Sakhis in Rahi block. 21 Swasthya Sakhis were trained and 15 other local women attended the training.
• We trained nine volunteer Master Trainers from Karnataka. We will officially be starting our work in Karnataka on 26th January, 2010 by introducing our program in Chikballapur district.
• Dr Satish Khera, professor of maxillofacial surgery in the U.S., attended our training sessions in Uttar Pradesh. We hope to start an oral health program in the region with his support very soon

Photo taken by Save A Mother staff at Lal Ganji.

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An Invisible Revolution in Rural India. Self Help Groups (SHGs) are a transformational phenomenon that has swept rural India over the last decade and a half. In a country where almost two-thirds of the population have no access to formal financial services, SHGs are a unique route to financial inclusion, increasing incomes, and building productive assets among the poor. Click on the link below to learn more about SHGs and the turning point of the SHG movement in early 1990 when the National Bank for Agricultural and Rural Development (NABARD) in India pilot tested the SHG-Bank Linkage Program. Today more than 400 women join a SHG every hour in India! Contributed by Ravi Grover

We crossed our target of training 400 new health activists in 2009 by November. December trainees will be an added bonus. Over 1,000 women have attended training sessions in 2009 and 412 have been designated as health activists. We have loftier targets for 2010.

We have expanded to a new district. Our team of trainers went to Babina, Jhansi and trained over 20 women. We are attempting to replicate our program there. We will also launch our program in Azamgarh on 6th January, 2010. Starting this month we are for the first time expanding our work to another state, Karnataka. Our trainers will conduct their first training in Chikbalapur, Karnataka. Our training books are currently being translated into Kannada. Mr Kamalkar Hallambi, Ex-Director of the Rural Literacy Mission of Karnataka will lead this program.

We are evolving into a health literacy organization with maternal mortality as our entry point into a community. Recognizing our potential to promote health literacy, our program is getting noticed. The Ministry of Health has asked us to participate in a national health literacy program through a national health portal.  The Ministry of Health will own and manage the portal with private-public partnership. We have already started on this project and in the next few months we will see the launch of the national program to spread health literacy.

According to our plan for 2009, we had planned to pilot test our program in a new district to see if we can replicate our work and methods outside Sultanpur district of Uttar Pradesh. The plan is on schedule. We are expanding to a new district: Jhansi. Our staff will travel to Babina, Jhansi to train new health activists from 26th to 29th November. We have also received requests from other states to start our program there. We may do this in 2010 depending on our resources and experience in Babina, Jhansi. We are currently drawing up our plans for 2010, which we will publish in our January 2010 newsletter.

This fall’s major Save A Mother fundraising event was a Masquerade Ball held on Saturday, October 24th, at the InterContinental Hotel on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. The first of its kind for Save A Mother’s Chicago chapter in size and scale, the event exceeded its fundraising targets and attracted a noteworthy guest list. The evening featured a silent auction and a fashion show arranged by local fashion designer Poonam Kamdar, with proceeds from the sale of showcased creations going toward the charity. Vocalist Suchismita Das performed a colorful variety of Indian musical pieces, and the evening closed with the tunes of local DJ Sunny Singh.

The event helped further increase awareness on the issue of maternal mortality in high-risk areas in India, while raising sufficient funds to sponsor the training of hundreds of more health activists in Uttar Pradesh. The funds raised will help Save A Mother extend its work to new districts in Uttar Pradesh. The organization extends thanks to the evening’s generous corporate sponsors, including National Republic Bank, Acreete, RedBull, and Quality Inn and Banquets of Burr Ridge. We extend special thanks also to Dr. Abbasi, Ajay Goel, Patricia Dominguez, Tara-Shamo Swaminathan, Sudesh Khosla, Reena and David Reynolds, Desh and Mini Thakkar, Drs. Prema and Brij Malani, Sudesh Vohra, Anita Singh, Miguel Bautista, and Dr. Surander and Vijay Singhal for their generous donations to sponsor health activists in the field.

Save-A-Mother plans to continue the tradition of an annual fundraiser during the Diwali season, with the goal of using proceeds to not only intensify the fight against maternal mortality, but also to begin growing other organizational causes such as tuberculosis eradication.

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• In September, we conducted four, three-day long trainings for new health activists. We trained 79 new activists in all
• We conducted eight refresher training courses for those already in the field
• We are now working in 459 villages and will reach our target of 600 villages by the end of December 2009

REPLICATION

• Our project manager visited Phoolpur in Azamgarh district in Uttar Pradesh to conduct a preliminary survey. The district does not have a larger NGO for us to piggy back on, as we are doing in Sultanpur district. But the district does have a well run girls school, so we will launch our Save A Mother program (health education, trainings, activism) in that school and see how far we can progress. This is a new district for us with a new twist
• Jhansi district in Uttar Pradesh has a micro-credit NGO of moderate size. We will enter this new district by launching our program using that NGO’s support base

LINKAGE WITH ASHA

• Our project manager attended a master training program for training ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activist) workers (they are part of the Government of India’s National Rural Health Mission). The program was conducted by Shabhagi Kendra and PATH in Lucknow. This gives us a better understanding of the ASHA methodology and stronger links with ASHA workers in our area.

USA CHAPTERS

• We are launching a Los Angeles chapter on 7th November, 2009. The chapter will have a small function in Niravana Restaurant
• Our New York Chapter will have a gathering at Sundaram Tagore Gallery on 11th November, 2009. Our Board Chairperson, Ms. Shabana Azmi will attend
• Our Chicago chapter will have a fundraising event – a Masquerade Ball – on 24th October, 2009
• We are exploring chapters in Toronto, San Francisco, and Philadelphia

OTHER UPDATES

• Our Chairperson, Ms Shabana Azmi spoke at FICCI (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry) in Delhi in September on health care and talked about Save A Mother’s work. A full transcript of her speech can be found here
• This is an amazing, inspirational story about what one person can do to bring about change to the lives of so many. And, that one person is only 16 years old!! Introducing Babar Ali…

One of our objectives in 2009 is to expand to another district. We conducted our first survey of Phoolpur in Uttar Pradesh to understand local need. Even though membership of the local NGO is not large, we will start a small pilot program. Our program manager Anoop Pant and I will visit the area to start the program at the end of November.

Anoop Pant will also attend a training program in Lucknow, conducted by PATH – an international NGO. Subsequently, he will become a master trainer for ASHA workers of the National Rural Health Mission. This will bring us even closer to the public health workers in our area, with whom we already have a working relationship. We will supplement the public health programs sponsored by the government.

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The participants came from Sultanpur district and two other districts: Azamgarh and Jhansi. The syllabus included extensive interactive training pertinent to rural health. We hope that these participants will help in carrying out further training in their regions with minimal outside help. We will closely monitor the progress and take action to improve. They will also assist with our ongoing training program.

We also continue to train local women to be village health activists who educate and assist the villagers. In July 2009 we will conduct four training sessions at Bhadar, Gauriganj, Amava, and Singhpur Blocks in Uttar Pradesh. 15 to 20 participants will attend each training and the recently trained trainers will assist. 

We will continue to keep you informed of our progress through our newsletters.

• Trained 32 new women health activists from different villages
• Conducted three refresher training courses for activists who have been trained in the past
• Signed a collaboration agreement with the International Institute of Health Management Research, Delhi, to train 40 block level trainers who will conduct trainings for village activists in their locations. This is an effort to scale up the program

Please visit Save-A-Mother Volunteer page to find out how you can get involved today!

 

Photo taken by Save A Mother staff.