Health

Health services are an important basic need of everyone that plays a vital role in the development of human life. Being a constitutional right, it is necessary for every person to have access to quality healthcare services. People, especially from marginalized and excluded sections, are not able to access basic health facilities. Due to a lack of quality public healthcare services and the high cost of private healthcare facilities, people are getting into the trap of poverty. The high out-of-pocket cost is also a challenge for marginalized sections of society. The Covid period has shown that a large part of the society can rely on public healthcare facilities.

The effort of AAK has been to improve the quality of public healthcare services by engaging with public healthcare service providers and strengthening the healthcare service delivery system. The organization works with the community by empowering Village Health Sanitation and Nutrition Committees (VHSNC), which increases public accountability for quality healthcare system and engages panchayats to take the lead in identifying gaps and improving healthcare services in their respective panchayats. Community-based monitoring of health services and service delivery institutions is an important tool to engage with the community and service providers. Facilitations are being done to fill the gap in healthcare services through this process.

Organization also emphasizes on non-violation of patients’ rights in the wake of increased cases of violation of patients’ rights. The effort is to raise public awareness among community and healthcare service providers as well for display of patient’s rights charter issued by central government.

At present, AAK is working in 23 Gram Panchayats covering 11 sub-centers, 10 Health and Wellness Centers and 40 Anganwadi Centers for delivery of health, nutrition and sanitation services.