Abstract
Abstract. Community ownership is essential for sustainable public health initiatives. The advantages of getting active involvement of homebound village women in a public health campaign to establish community health surveillance are being reported in this paper. With the support of the local self government authorities, we had selected 120 village women, and they were given extensive training on various healthcare schemes, home based management of local ailments, leadership skills and survey techniques. Afterwards, they had been asked to share their knowledge with at least 10-15 women in their neighbourhood. This had improved their status in the neighbourhood, as more and more people started getting their advice on healthcare and social services related matters. Subsequently, they had collected the socio-demographic and morbidity details of the entire households, including the geometric coordinates (longitude and latitude) of the households and public offices. In this process, they began to use the geographic position system (GPS) machines, dismissing the myth that women are not that techno savvy, further improving their acceptability in the community. Many among them were seen proudly describing the implications of the thematic maps to the village people and line department staff in the monthly subcentre meetings. Many were offered seats in the local body elections by leading political parties, a few of them did stand in the elections and three of them had won the elections. This experience reinforces our belief that the empowerment of villagers with newer technology could be a public health tool with much wider positive implications.
Highlights
Women empowerment was given major thrust in the people’s campaign and one third of the Local Self Government Institutes (LSGI) seats were reserved for women, which was later increased to one half in 2009.(Joseph 2009; Kuttappan 2013)
In the light of the decentralised planning process in Kerala, Achutha Menon Centre for Health Science Studies (AMCHSS) got into a pack with the Athiyannur Block Panchayat in 2004 to support the local body in their health planning
With the concurrence of Panchayat members and field health workers, we identified three housebound women from each of the 19 wards of the Venganoor Grama Panchayats (GP) and requested them to spare a few hours a day for this task
Summary
This densely populated state, located in the south-west corner of India, with a population of 33.4 million spread over an area of 38,863 sq. km has many unique features.(Kannan et al 1991) It has a better infant mortality and maternal mortality rates, higher literacy rates, higher school enrolment rates, and higher healthcare utilisation rates compared to many other Indian states.(Registrar General India 2011) Following the spirit of the 73rd 74th constitutional amendments in 1993, Kerala has enacted the Kerala Panchayat Raj act, 1994 and Kerala Municipality Act, 1994 by the ruling right wing United democratic Front (UDF) government and the 9th five year plan allocations were planned .(Commission 2008) The momentum of decentralised planning got intensified in 1996, when the left wing Left Democratic Front (LDF) came into power and the Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad(KSSP) initiated a campaign to ensure community participation in the initiative.(Elamon et al 2004; Kannan 2000) Under the process, the Local Self Government Institutes (LSGI) were given 40% of the plan budget b the state governments and the Panchayats (LSGI) were free to decide upon their priorities for the five years under some broad guidelines. The Sree Chitra Tinunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology (SCTIMST) is an institute of national importance in India, which is an autonomous institute, with a standing of a University, under the department of science and technology, Government of India. It has a biomedical unit, a super-specialty hospital and a public health unit, called the Achutha Menon Centre for Health Science Studies (AMCHSS). In the light of the decentralised planning process in Kerala, AMCHSS got into a pack with the Athiyannur Block Panchayat in 2004 to support the local body in their health planning. Later with the delimitation of the civic wards in June 2010, Vizhinjam GP was separated and incorporated into Thiruvananthapurm City Corporation, leaving a total of five GPs in Athiyannur Block Panchayat
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