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Celebrating World Health Day with Rural Communities in Sindh

May 14, 2017

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A walk was commenced to observe Health Day at Rural Health Center, Hyderfarm.

Women from nearby villages actively participated in the Health Day Awareness Walk at Rural Health Center, Nabisar.

Women of residual and nearby villages at the Rural Health Center, Hyderfarm attending an Awareness Session on Importance of Healthcare.

On Health Day, health sessions were conducted with women participation to highlight the health right of women and children.

Health Day Awareness Walk was conducted by the MNCH team of Community World Service Asia at the Rural Health Center, Nabisar.

Community World Service Asia is provides medical care with a focus on maternal, neonatal and child health (MNCH) through supporting three Rural Health Centers (RHC) in Umerkot since 2015. These health centres provide healthcare to the most vulnerable communities affected by recurrent natural disasters, disease and poverty. The primary aim is to provide medical care through curative and preventive services while adopting a community-based approach by ensuring participation of village health committees and government health department.

The MNCH team organized World Health Day on 7^th April at the RHCs in Umerkot in participation of a large number of community members from catchment area, government health staff of each RHC and professionals from NGOs and Civil Society Organizations. The main focus of the day was the topic of “Depression” which was the universal theme of this international day globally. Attention was also given to other more common health issues in the area such as heatstroke, diarrhea and anemia.

Depression is one of the many results of poor health, poverty, economic and social injustices and power imbalance prevalent in the rural society. The main purpose of celebrating this day was to raise common public awareness on various health issues and to sensitize the community and paramedic staff on mitigating the health problems common in the community through self-care and knowledge building.

Topics discussed on World Health Day in Umerkot:

To increase public awareness regarding various causes and preventive measures of depression
To provide detail knowledge of getting prevented from various diseases including diarrhea and missiles.
To encourage most vulnerable groups of people to frequently and regularly checkup the women during pregnancy in MNCH Centers.
To promote self-care among people of rural area.
To motivate the paramedic staff to make their efforts in providing health facility to vulnerable community of the catchment area of all three RHCs.

Medical Superintendents (MSs) of each health facility, health committee representatives, community activists and project staff gave orientations to the community members including men, women and children, on the major causes, prevention and mitigation of depression, heatstrokes and diarrhea. They imparted key messages on good health that aimed to enable men, women and children to lead healthy and productive lives and continue being of valuable existence in lives of their families and communities.

Rural healthcare lags in quality, affordability, and accessibility for several reasons. The main problem faced by health authorities in this regard is lack of awareness. One of the major reasons for such a deplorable state of health in these areas is the lack of health facilities. The establishment of health centers is ensuring better health and is supporting an improved standard of living for the people of rural Sindh.