By Business India Editorial

Nestled in the northeastern corner of Kerala against the Western Ghats, Wayanad is listed among the 115 backward districts in India. Only 3.79 per cent of the district is urbanised, 18 per cent tribal-dominated, and 65 per cent of its population remains below the poverty line. People had to travel nearly 100 km to avail even basic healthcare treatment.

In comes Dr. Moopen’s Wayanad Institute of Medical Sciences (DM-WIMS), with a campus including an 800-bed teaching hospital, medical college, college for pharmacy and college for nursing. This initiative is part of Aster DM Healthcare – a healthcare major conglomerate with its presence in nine countries including India, founded by Dr Azad Moopen, to reduce diseases and to educate people in tribal areas.

The institute created a community network under a Kudumbashree Arogya Pariraksha Saktheekarana Scheme, that aimed to empower nearly 1,00,000 women that work in Wayanad’s rural pockets. (Kudumbashree was conceived as a community network based out of Kerala aimed at primarily empowering women across rural pockets in the state.) The scheme involved checking their health profile and issuing privilege health cards to these women and their families for further check-ups and treatments.

While working on this programme, the medical team faced a challenge in reaching out to these women. Hence, the network had to be spread across various parts of Wayanad to conduct health camps and assemble them in one place for health awareness. A Community Connect team was created to work with the women at not just district- and panchayat-level but right down to the wards. Partnerships with local panchayats helped the programme in improving its reach and impact. The long-term benefit intended through this scheme is to provide an overall improvement in health standards and reduction of workdays and livelihood for 1 lakh working women. This is the first-of-its-kind healthcare scheme in Kerala for Kudumbashree workers.

Tertiary treatment is provided at a concessional rate or free of cost by the Institute – for which Rs23 lakh has already been spent on treatment and follow-ups. Launched in June 2017, and followed up by extensive fieldwork, the number of outpatients has increased from 2,194 to 17,817 in March 2018. The indoor tertiary treatment count has touched 250. More than 65,000 cards have been distributed for the benefit of the women network and their families. The next step is to scale up the initiative by leveraging technology for the existing scheme by using visual media for education. Telemedicine is also being used for better impact, thus reducing the physical, geographical gap between the doctor and patients.