Van Olmen J, Criel B, Devadasan N, Pariyo G, De Vos P, Van Damme W, Van Dormael M, Marchal B, Kegels G. Primary health care in the 21st century: primary care providers and people’s empowerment. Tropical Medicine and International Health. 2010; 15(4):386-90
As part of the Global Awareness Campaign on the eve of the World No Tobacco Day, we are involved in launching an initiative to unite the doctors in Bengaluru on creating anti tobacco awareness.
This initiative will bring together the doctors from Bengaluru under the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sceinces, Indian Medical Association, Indian Dental Association, Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike and various other national & international organizations working on tobacco control.
Event titled : Freedom from Tobacco – Bengaluru unites
Venue : Freedom Park
Date & time : May 31st 2011 from 4-8pm
This awareness campaign would include:
– Medical & Dental colleges participating in cultural event
– Doctors from Bengaluru uniting under a single banner for tobacco control
– A forum for the public & NGO’s to interact with doctors
– Guidance for tobacco consumers on quitting tobacco habits
For further details please visit
Tobacco Free Bangalore
2010 – the year was filled with new lessons in an area that impacts public health enormously, the pharma industry. At the request of Dr. Christiane Fischer of BUKO-Pharma, my colleague Amruta and myself set out collecting information on the products of three German pharmaceutical companies –Bayer, Baxter and Boehringer.
It was an interesting journey, revealing a number of lessons as we uncovered information in a systematic fashion. The most striking fact initially was how difficult it is to get information on drugs in our country. While the MIMS and CIMS are tabletop advisors to the busy practicing clinician, there is no single compendium of all drugs (generic and non-generic) sold in the country.
It was also clear that medicines are already expensive for the common man, since very few insurances pay for outpatient treatment. It is imperative that practical legal action needs to be implemented in the area of drug control, manufacturing and pricing at national and state levels.
View the publication here
An international team of public health experts evaluated the district health management capacity-building initiative of IPH in Tumkur. The team consisted of a mix of public health practitioners, researchers and pedagogists and met with participants of the tumkur programme as well as senior officials from health department of Government of Karnataka and the Karnataka Health Systems Development and Reforms Project (KHSDRP). The intervention in Tumkur consisted of 16 modules of contact sessions (classroom training) for District Health Officer, various programme officers, District Programme manager & Block Programme Manager under NRHM and PHC Medical Officers as well as hand-holding at their workplaces.
The team consisted of (in alphabetical order):
They mainly focused on coherence of the course, i.e. how the course was designed, course effectiveness and efficiency in the management of the course. The findings and suggestions of this external evaluation will help improve our understanding of how to organise programmes for capacity-building of district health managers and to effectively scale up the same course across the state/country.
Dr.Tanya Seshadri attended the 3rd National workshop of the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana was conducted in Raipur, Chhattisgarh from May 3rd to 5th. This national workshop was organised by the Ministry of Labour & Employment and the State Nodal Agency, Chhattisgarh. This workshop brought together stakeholders from across the country to a common platform for discussion. They included State nodal agencies (SNA), Insurance companies (IC), Third party administrators (TPA), Smart card providers (SCPs), few hospitals involved & interested NGOs.
The workshop was inaugurated by the Hon. CM of Chhattisgarh and was followed by brief discussions by representatives of Ministries of Labour & Employment, and Rural development. A simple award ceremony was also conducted to recognise stakeholders for their outstanding service to the scheme in their respective field in each region.
The three day workshop had a systematic approach of presentations and discussions from past experiences and enrollment procedures to data analysis and future plans. Each topic was presented by an SNA/IC team who had been recognised for their work in that particular issue. This use of experiential learning made it easier to comprehend and interesting for all irrespective of their involvement/prior knowledge of RSBY procedure and activities. This in addition to the guidance of key facilitators ensured participation of various stakeholders in all discussions. The focus of the entire workshop appeared to be finding solutions for problems presented via discussions and consensus. Almost all participants appeared to be quite motivated and interested in proceedings of all the sessions judging by the attendance and intensity of discussions across the days.
All documents and media concerning RSBY had been compiled, written to a CD, and made available to all participants. All presentations made during the course will soon be made available on the website in a short time. Apart from the national workshop, regional state level workshops and district level workshops are also regularly conducted.
Presentations of the RSBY workshop
Dr. Prashanth NS and Arupa Das attended the First PHRN National Convention 2011 in Ranchi, Jharkhand,
from 29th April to 1st May 2011.
IPH was invited to be on a panel to discuss issues on human resources in health.
The PHRN convention was a platform, where public health experts and policy makers from several institutions, representatives of the Government and several doctors, programme managers (DPM and BPM), policy makers (members of planning commission) and also grass-root level community health workers like ANMs, ASHAs, Anganwadi workers and panchayat representatives attended and shared their knowledge and experiences.
Many important topics were discussed during these three days session like importance of community participation and how to involve communities actively, issues of National Rural Health Mission and how to overcome these issues, innovations and strategies for filling human resource gaps, debate on three year rural medical practitioner, challenges in public health education and introduction of public health cadre and also issues like RCH, non- communicable diseases, ASHA, planning process importance of holistic approach in public health, relation between social Movement and health.
PHRN will soon come out with a conference statement/resolution. The experience from IPH’s Swasthya Karnataka initiative were placed during the panel discussion which was also taken into consideration in the preparation of the final statement. The final resolution and statement will soon be made available on their website.
Representatives from Public Health Foundation of India, National Health System Resource Centre as well as state health systems resource centre of Chhattisgarh were present.
PHRN National Convention Background Note
Photos
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/fbx/?set=a.214276068590417.60342.131455163539175
