NGOs ponder on healthcare perspectives in communities

Our Reporter
Dimapur, Nov. 5 (EMN): The third day of the German Academic Exchange Service, or Daad, alumni workshop was conducted on November 5 at Hotel Acacia in Dimapur. The concept of the workshop centred on health perspectives for impoverished populations. The event will conclude on November 10.

An official of the Solidarites International at Dhaka in Bangladesh, Parthe Sarathy, addressed the event too. He spoke about his experience working in Mon district of Nagaland with the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

Solidarites International is a humanitarian organisation, while the MSF is an international, independent, medical humanitarian organisation.

Sarathy said that in 2010, the Medecins Sans Frontieres partnered with the local government to refurbish Mon district hospital and train health workers and staff there. He said that the MSF developed the pharmacy, set up a biomedical waste management system, delivery room and an operation theatre.

Further, Sarathy said, the MSF handed over the hospital to the department of Health and Family welfare, government of Nagaland in 2014. He informed that Mon district hospital bagged the ‘cleanliness award,’ the Kayakalp Awards, for 2018-2019.

A member of the Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation (KSCF), Govin Khanal, also talked about the concept of ‘Bal Mitra gram’ or ‘child friendly village’ in Hindi. It is a social movement that is geared toward creating an empowered ecosystem in communities, Khanal said.

‘To build a child-friendly village, the first thing to do is to withdraw children from work, and enrol them in school and empowering girls women and supporting village development which leads to child friendly environment, he said.

At the event, Tshering Dupka, who is a faculty member of Khesar Gyalpo University of Medical Science, explained work that aims to take services to unreached populations, in the context of the Bhutanese healthcare system.

Gyalpo said that the ‘unreached populations are those residing in temporary shelters; cow herders, and national work force labourers.’ The approach is to give them basic healthcare by identifying and mapping such populations by district health officers and conducting outreach programmes, she said.