Health Programme for Rural Area’s

Last Updated on Monday, 24 October 2011 04:21 Written by Natural Health Team Monday, 24 October 2011 04:21

Health Information about Health Programme for Rural Area’s

Rural community health programme in punjab, India. It has the objective of improving the understanding of disorders of health in the rural community. We aimed to assess the impact of a health programme on the awareness of schoolchildren, their parents, friends who were not attending school, and neighbours.

The rural programme succeeded in improving awareness of health in rural areas and the community. The area peoples were receptive to the programme, and shared their new understanding with family, friends, and neighbours. Health planners who wish to improve community awareness of health, particularly in areas with low literacy rates, should consider setting up rural-health programmes.

While the primary objective was to operate a community health programme in the defined catchment area, the other programme components included training lay volunteer workers to detect and manage mental disorders, operating a mental health service system in the area, planning and implementing an intervention programme for the identified mentally ill, integration of mental health with primary health care infrastructure in the area, and conducting periodic awareness programmes in the community.

These were periodically held in different villages, using local folklore, dance and music. The emphasis was on early recognition of mental illness and prompt treatment. Following the awareness programmes, it was noticed that referrals to the clinic increased, mainly from village leaders, traditional healers, community workers and general medical practitioners

The project has been community oriented in that over 80% of the staff were drawn from the same community facilitating easier acceptance and greater involvement. Village leaders, teachers, religious heads and others with influence were involved in the programme at various stages.

Most of rural India is devoid of formal mental health services. It was evident soon that communities by and large favoured traditional and religious forms of treatment, not only because it suited their explanatory models of mental illnesses, but also because of the easier availability of these services, in comparison with formal medical facilities. The project staff established good links with traditional healers in that area who gradually began referring cases to the centre. No efforts were made to thrust into the community a medical model of illness or to persuade them to give up the existing help they were used to. Within a few months, it was clear that this rural community was ready to abandon its traditional treatments for some of the mental disorders, while it continued to hold on to its view points regarding others. This is not an uncommon phenomenon, and it is probable that most stigmatising illnesses are faced with this kind of “mixed loyalties”.

It is possible to train lay community volunteers to identify various mental disorders and implement simple psycho-social rehabilitation strategies. Involving and training lay community workers from the community facilitated easier acceptance by the patients and their families. The interventions offered as part of this programme have facilitated community integration of the mentally ill. Interventions have been individually tailored to the needs of the patients and their families. Establishing rapport with the family and the community through the involvement of local village leaders has ensured the acceptance of such a programme by the population.

The programme has shown that there are some basic elements of psycho-social intervention that are essential in any community mental health programme in a rural community, particularly in developing countries. These should include, besides provision of psycho-tropic drugs, the involvement of the family and the mobilisation of local community resources. Structured and skilled psycho-social rehabilitation programmes may be too complex for implementation and may not be necessary for the rural population. Besides, these cannot be implemented by the lay community volunteers.

Health care is undergoing a transition the world over from institutionalisation to community care. Understanding community perceptions, attitudes and coping styles will increasingly become more crucial in community based programmes. This is even more relevant in developing countries, where “stereotypes” about the mentally ill have existed for centuries. Making a change in this without antagonising or hurting the feelings of the community would be a challenge. In this respect, this project has been a kind of forerunner and provided a model which may be replicated in other parts of the world.

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