Social immersion project

Report

EduCARE India
Mclodeganj, Dharamshala,Himachal Pradesh

BY
SAURABH
2018JULB02024
PGDM 2018-20
Introduction

Our social immersion program (SIP) was scheduled on 22nd of April 2019 and I wanted to make
it a value addition program for me. Me along with my 7 other team members went to dharam
shala. We knew we would be gone for 12 days but beyond that we had very little idea that we
could achieve so much, everybody had their own set of ideas and beliefs, but little clue did all
of us have for the project. Everyone had a genuine excitement about every step of the project
where all came together and became a part of the journey. This report is divided into three/four
phases. So, let’s get started, first with some background we all geared up and reached our field
of work.

About the SIP organization

Name of the NGO –Edu CARE- INDIA

Location – Dharamshala

Industry type –

Key management mentor – Harjeet Bhullar

Industry mentor – Dr. Rajendra Kumar Sinha

Dr. Nina Jacob

Location…locals….locality
A brief about our location, Dharamshala (also spelled Dharamshala) is the district headquarters
of Kangra district in India. It was formerly known as Bhagsu. The Dalai Lama's residence and
the headquarters of the Central Tibetan Administration (the Tibetan government in exile) are
in Dharamshala. Dharamshala is 18 kilometres from Kangra. From there we headed towards
naddi village which is a beautiful spot in the serene setting of Himachal and is the abode of
beauty. At an altitude of 7152 ft. from the sea level this amazing village is a well-known place
for its trekking experiences and is visited by thousands of travellers every year. Naddi Village
is just 3kms away from McLeod Ganj which itself is one thrilling spot for travellers and
tourists.
About EDUCARE:

Edu CARE India is a self-sustainable autonomous community development and

public welfare NGO India. They are committed to the cause of global good and trying to
make a difference with the following vision, mission, goals, and values.

1. Vision- Provide opportunity and resources toward sustainable outcomes that improve
lives and communities.

2. Mission -Develop and administer effective programs to regenerative sustainable

development.

3. Working Areas –Empowerment, Education, Waste management, Health Management,

Alternative Resources.
Socio-economic condition:

Population here has very high dependency on agriculture and allied activities for their
livelihood and on tourism. They are highly vulnerable to climate change and differ from their
urban counterparts in terms of occupations, earnings, literacy. Huge dependency on agriculture
and allied sectors, rising temperature, changing precipitation pattern and their seasonal
variability will adversely affect the agriculture/horticulture and allied sectors productivity and
therefore State’s prosperity. The ancillary industry like packaging, transportation, food
processing will also get affected. Himachal Pradesh has micro climatic conditions and the
varying elevation level plays pivotal role in deciding the area suitability for growing cash rich
temperate fruits like apple and other stone fruits, nowadays they provide food shelter for
tourists on rent for livelihood.
Problems identified :-

IDEAL:

• Proper health and medical facilities should be available there along with the
transportation as the population of the village is nearly 1000 but as it is a tourist place,
so proper facilities are a mandate, so that people can stay with convenience.

REALITY:

• No proper health facilities for emergency cases. At the time of emergency, people of
these village- Baal, Naddi, Ghera have go downhill to Dharamshala, to get proper and
accurate medical facilities.
•
• Mode of transportation could be fatal for a patient. Transportation of a normal patient
is a stretcher but, for the people who reside in uphill are carried through a PALKI.

• No awareness regarding patient handling and first AID. Earlier, when an accident uses
to take place, group of people around the victim use to carry them to the hospital, and
on the way to doctor the victim dies.

• Uneven Roads As, it is a hilly region, uneven roads are expected.

 • No street lamps on the road to Baal village The route that leads to Dharamshala hospital
has street lights which is nowadays, not maintained by the local authorities due to no
funds available to them.

• One for too many Only 1 assistant, who is available for 563 people has to take
responsible for every health issue they pursue.

Consequences:

• People of uphill arears, must suffer a lot at the time of emergency.

• if in case the assistant falls ill, there would be no one who can take responsible for the
crowd

• Due to palki, patient handling in different cases of health issue is not possible.

• Due to lack of knowledge about patient can cause death.

• No lighting can cause attack by animals or any accident.

The problem which touched me the most is the lack of medical facilities as a person’s life is
most important to me, but in this village even if anything happens to anyone in this village even
if it can be cured by immediate treatment, it will not be possible as no emergency facility is
available and the time it will take to reach the hospital is too much, so that can be the priority
for solution, so we have suggested to increase the medical attendants and facilities and to attract
the attention of government toward this.
Solutions and cost involved while implementation of them

The answer to this problem my team has come up with different aspects of solutions. They are
as follows:-

1) Sociological Solution
a) Training through workshops on First Aid and hygiene workshop can be conducted in
the villages of Dharamshala regarding the first aid as well as the practice conductive to
maintain health and preventing disease, especially through cleanliness. At least, one of
every 3rd person should attend the session. This session doesn’t involve any sort of cost
in it. This activity could be conducted with the help of the people who have come to the
NGO for their internship program and has proper knowledge of First Aid and hygiene.
b) Monitoring the availability of all basic medical facilities What we have here is, only
the key i.e. communication. Just a basic communication in between supplier and the
assistant of the clinic s needed. The assistant can ask the supplier to avail the medicines
when the level of medicines comes to economic (the level at which the order should
quoted to avoid scarcity). Again, no cost involved.
c) Making First Aid a compulsory subject It would be nice if, children are given
knowledge of FIRST AID from a very young age, by introducing a new subject in their
curriculum which includes basic medical and first aid concepts with effective practical.
Since, the children are the backbone of the coming era, once they are taught half of the
problem will be solved.

2) Business Solution
a) Internships through med life, net meds, mg convincing for their good to get trained
under any of these medicine delivery applications so that, people can earn some amount
out of this.
b) Providing stretcher to the clinic at Baal village stretcher is the important tool of a clinic.
This helps to carry the patient to the doctor. With the help of NGO, we can provide the
village with a stretcher which is to be contributed, maintained and taken care by the
 villagers of Baal itself. But before they are provided with the stretcher the villagers have
to be attain proper knowledge how to use it with different health condition of the
patient. To prove the above stated word, we had a primary survey.

 We came up with the idea of providing a stretcher to the villages. We went and
asked few people (Exhibit 1.2) about it and response was pretty good.

Some other aspects which could help

i. Train and enhance capacity of Panchayat Raj Institutions (PRIs) to own,

control and manage public health services.

ii. Promote access to improved health care at household level through the village
level worker , ASHA

iii. Health plan for each village through Village Health Committee of the
Panchayat.

iv. Strengthening sub centres through better human resource development, clear
quality standards, better community standards, better community support and
an untied fund to enable local planning and action and more multipurpose
workers.

v. Strengthening existing Primary Health Centres through better staffing and

human resource development policy, clear quality standards, better community
support and an untied fund enable the local management committee to achieve
these standards.

vi. Provision of 30 – 50 bedded CHC per lakh population for improved curative
care to a normative standard. (Indian Public Health Standards defining
personnel, equipment and management standards)
vii. Preparation and implementation of an inter-sector district plan prepared by
district health mission, including drinking water supply, sanitation, hygiene
and nutrition.

viii. Integrating vertical health and family welfare programmes at national, state,
district and block levels.

ix. Technical support to national, state and district health mission for public
health management.

x. Strengthening capacities for data collection, assessment and review for

evidence base planning, monitoring and supervision.

xi. Supplementary Strategies under Mission

xii. Regulation for private sector including the informal Rural Medical
Practitioners (RMPs) to ensure availability of quality service to citizens at
reasonable cost.

xiii. Promotion of Public Private Partnership for achieving public health goals.

xiv. Mainstreaming the Indian System of medicine (AYUSH) revitalizing local

health traditions.

xv. Reorienting medical education to support rural health issues including

regulation of medical care to medical ethics.

xvi. Effective and viable risk pooling and social health insurance to provide health
security to the poor by ensuring accessible, affordable, accountable and good
quality hospital care.
 c) Adding more medical facilitators and staff While research and interviewing we got to
know that, except the doctor and one assistant there is no one who can cure the patient.
Almost for 500 people, the assistant is the one who can help where doctor is only
available for 5 days, 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. In this overdependency case, more
compounder and medical staffs need to be recruited. So, at the time of emergency, there
won’t be chaos. And, proper attention can provide to each patient there.

3) Ecological Solution
a) Sign boards for tourists directing the tourist people towards the clinic. As it is a hilly
area, anything can happen like someone can get sprain in their muscles, might get
injured while having fun in the waterfall etc., can immediately go to the doctor with the
help of sign board. These boards involve no cost because, it can be written in the woods
or in the trees or in the stones that are on the way.
b) Identification of accidental spots Identifying frequently happening accident location
through local people.
c) Being ready 24* 7 Always there to provide first aids at the accidental spots to avoid
severe problem.
d) we have advised the local shopkeepers to keep at least basic medicines (like crocin,
paracetamol, saridon, etc.).
e) The other solution which came into our mind which was for tourist coming to visit there as if
while trekking they injure themselves then what to do? A sign board mentioning the contact
no. of Mr. Sreedhar and way to the dispensary where he or she could get a first aid.
f) Next solution is to provide training to the people of villages about first aid & hygiene as they
don’t know about it.

Challenge
Everything in this universe has its own pros and cons, similarly with the solutions my team has
provided its pros and cons. The challenges the NGO, can face while availing the aids the
villages in Dharamshala. Some of these are as follows:

1) Proper distribution of aids

Being hilly area and a remote village with less availability of roads proper distribution
of aids could be a tedious task, but it is not an impossible task as aids are being
distributed just the thing here would be ensuring frequent distribution through
efficient distribution channel would be enough. Since there are two communities it is
also necessary that aids are equally distributed so as to avoid communal tensions in
the village.

2) Training and half Knowledge is dangerous

Training the individuals is a task which can be accomplished but the problem to be
noted down as the challenge here would be how enthusiastically the individuals take
part in the training and knowledge, how keen they are to learn and how will they
practically impart the knowledge shared to them.

3) Improving health of people - Dependency & Habit changing Plan

We already have seen what are the health problems faced by the villagers improving
their health condition, making them fit and improving their life expectancy would be
one of the greatest challenges and the solution to this problem could only be given by
people residing in these villages, as it is only the people who can change their mind set
and methodological thinking, we found that major percent of population are not willing
to change or accept the prevailing changes. The people have to change their sedative
lifestyle if they want to improve their health, overdependency on the compounder and
local medical shops have to be left out in the adaptation process.

4) Fund Raising

Fund raising is an issue which can be resolved through local authorities and the
government.
 5) Convincing people it’s for their own good

Until people understand that its for their own good no one can help them, it will prove
to be a challenge too big to solve.

Simply expanding and developing the health services cannot achieve improvements in the
health status of a population. The linkage between health and development has been amply
demonstrated globally by giving proper training and nurturing people about it. Health
development is increasingly becoming part of a strategy aiming at satisfying the basic needs of
the population by giving the poor, access to resources and economic opportunities, raising
education levels, ensuring availability and distribution of food, improving the status of women,
providing the basic infrastructure of transportation, improving the nutritional status and
sanitation.

Conclusion:

Statistics from the World health organisation shows that half of the deaths are occurred due
to lack of awareness and unavailability of timely medical inventions. The need for medical
check up is vital in today’s world , especially when prevention is easier than cure .
Our aim was to focus on providing people with cheap and efficient health solution. We also
educated the people about the frequently occurring diseases and how to cure such with proper
care and hygiene.
LEARNING:
 coordinating with the NGO head the village panchayat at an appropriate time.
 Team management and division of activities
 Creating awareness among people regarding heath and personal hygiene