Community Health and Development Project

Chotanagpur Area  | North-East Area

North-East Area Health and Development Project

BACKGROUND
The North East of India constitutes the seven ‘sister’ states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura. North East India is mostly hilly; it has plains on both sides of the river Brahmaputra and the Himalayan range around it. The flora and fauna of this region is numerous and varied. The region accounts for 7.8% of the total land space of the country. The region is of strategic importance for the country on account of the fact that nearly 90% of its borders form India’s international boundaries.

PROJECT AREA
The seven Community Health and Development Projects are located in the states of Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya and Mizoram. The local project partners and implementing organizations are Burrow’s Memorial Christian Hospital (Assam), Calvary Counseling Center, Kuki Baptist Convention, Khangshim Baptist Church (Manipur), Khashi Jaintia Presbyterian Hospital, Shillong, Khasi-Jaintia Presbyterian Assembly Hospital, Jowai (Meghalaya) and Presbyterian Hospital, Durtlang, Aizawl, Mizoram.

PROBLEMS

Area
North East India is an underdeveloped area of the country. The continued political unrest and ethnic violence there, and the difficult terrain make essential health and development services inaccessible.

Specific
The people in the project areas are facing problems in drug abuse and alcoholism. Communicable diseases such as tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and Malaria.

STRATEGY

The present project is involved in empowering local church congregations and women to work with communities to improve the health and economic status of people residing in the project sites.

The strategy in the next phase are as follows:

• Involve more churches in the Northeast in actions for health.

• Motivation and capacity building of churches in the North East to run similar health and development projects.

• Provide linkages with local institutions so that they can be used to provide training for staff and volunteers in the project.

• Facilitating the churches in the identification of project staff

• Development of formal module including

1. Malaria control, tuberculosis control, etc

2. Innovative training methods for community health volunteers

3. Motivating church and local community group

• Using existing projects to provide hands on training

• Disseminate learning from women’s group and other experience through regional workshops & conferences, equip projects to access and tie up with local support government and NGOs
• Link with available resources/organizations such as CASA-NEI, World Vision, CRS-NEI etc.

METHDOLOGY

Target group 
Churches and community in the Noth-East The present project comprises of 7 micro projects covering around 95 tribal villages of about 35000 people in 4 states namely Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Assam.

Process
Capacity building through various training, workshop, and conferences and mentoring visits at church, projects and communities levels.

OBJECTIVES

• To reduce morbidity and mortality due to infectious diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis in pregnant mothers and children under one year of age.

• To improve the existing functioning of SHG and propagate its practice to other villages in the project areas.

• To increase the number of churches taking-up community health projects.

• To integrate substance abuse and HIV/AIDS in the existing community health projects.

• To propagate appropriate utilization of herbal medicine.

ACTIVITIES

RESULTS