31st National Road Safety Week – January 2020

31st National Road Safety Week – January 2020

1.5 lakh lives are lost every year and many more are debilitated on Indian roads due to road crashes. This causes the families of victims with immense economic hardship and emotional trauma. According to the WHO reports, road crashes are one of the leading cause of deaths among the youth between the ages of 5-29 in India and worldwide.

To make our roads safe for all road users and to reduce the crash rates, every year “National Road Safety Week” is observed throughout the country. The focus of the activities of this week is to create more awareness among road users about the road safety and to emphasize good road using practices.

To observe this year’s 31st National Road Safety Week, Institute of Public Health in association with HKBK Group of institutions and Indian Degree College under banner of Safer roads Bengaluru initiative organised a bunch of activities from 14th to 17th of Jan 2020 at our selected stretch of road in Bengaluru. Signature campaign #IResolve4RoadSafety, Quiz on road safety for public and college students, Human chains at major junctions are the main activities among all other activities.

We were at all major junctions of the selected stretch of road from Hebbal to K R Puram throughout the Road Safety Week. A signature wall with student volunteers was present at all the junctions seeking public commitment for road safety. Around 3000 people committed for safer road usage through signing on our campaign wall.
Quiz on road safety witnessed more than 5000 participation. Winners of the quiz were awarded with a ISI marked 2-wheeler helmets by #SaferroadsBLR initiative. We also engaged people through our social media platform Facebook and twitter for the broader reach.

2nd global meeting of Health Inc consortium at Dakar

2nd global meeting of Health Inc consortium at Dakar

The second global meeting of the Health Inc project was held in Senegal between 9th and 11th November. This meeting was hosted by the Centre de Recherché sur les Politiques Sociales (CREPOS – Research Centre for Political and Social Science) in the capital city of Dakar. All partners of the Health Inc consortium attended this meeting. From IPH, the Health Inc team comprised of Dr.Devadasan N, Dr.Thriveni BS, and Dr.Tanya Seshadri.

The three day meeting began with presentation and discussion by ‘Experts by Experience’ in poverty and social exclusion from Belgium who provided insight into social exclusion from the point of view of those excluded. This enlightening start was followed by presentations from all partners regarding their localised research protocol along with challenges foreseen. While the previous meeting had allowed for discussions regarding health financing mechanisms across Ghana, Senegal, Maharashtra (India) and Karnataka (India), this time the focus was on the planning and implementation of research across the various sites. The challenge remains to develop a common skeletal protocol while allowing each team to develop protocols based on their specific context. The health financing schemes being used to study social exclusion in the African and Indian sites are National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS, Ghana), Plan Sesame (Senegal) and Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY – Maharashtra and Karnataka).

This meeting was followed by a two day workshop for the junior researchers from the various institutes. The workshop had the group divided into country-based teams and each team worked on developing context-specific hypotheses and initiated work on the research tools.

For further details about the project, visit the recently launched website at http://www.healthinc.eu/

Photo below shows representatives of all six partners of the Health Inc consortium under the Baobab tree (national tree of Senegal) at Goree Island in Dakar, Senegal.

 

 

 

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