Kolkata Foundation Inc

Various Health Care Projects, including (1) providing direct financial and backup support to Rural Health Care Foundation (RHCF) in running four primary medical care centers serving over 824 neighboring villages, to provide high quality curative and preventive medical care to the poor and underserved communities. About 252,000 patients (64% women) were served from these four centers during the year. Areas of treatment included general medicine, optical including providing spectacles, dental, homeopathic treatment, physiotherapy, and cataract surgery. (2) Also supported RHCF in strengthening the health of rural poor by reaching out to inhabitants of these more than 824 villages with trained staff to ensure early diagnosis and effective treatment of underlying disease and ailments for common disorders, especially when they are asymptomatic. Almost 105,000 beneficiaries (50% women) were pre-screened during the year as a part of this Project Outreach. As a result of these efforts about 61% of those screened (about 65,000 people) were diagnosed with various ailments like Joint Pain, Gastric, Optical, Dental, Blood Pressure, Skin related, Blood Sugar, etc. (3) Supported MUKTI to treat underprivileged patients from their Gram Clinic and to conduct various Medical Camps during the year in various villages of the Sundarbans area (4) During the year about 3,450 patients (about 44% women) benefited from the PRO Computer Vision Phoropter, and more than 1,200 patients (45% women) benefited from the motorized Operation Theater table, provided earlier by the Foundation to Nanritam to enable cataract surgery and quality eye care treatment to the under privileged.

Women's empowerment - We continued with the two Kolkata Foundation Initiatives launched in earlier years. Both these initiatives were implemented through our supported nonprofit Mukti. The first is called Shahoshini (meaning Courageous Women in local language) and is geared towards helping women develop agency and decision making power over issues that affect their lives - like gender, discrimination and violence. The objective is to train a cohort of women to address such issues and encourage them to disseminate their learning in their communities and to address these issues in their families, networks and villages. During the year a cohort of 26 Shahoshinis made more than 25,000 family visits. They conducted regular village level meetings where they reached out to ~4,400 families. They also conducted various community campaigns and awareness programs through which they reached ~3,500 community members. They also intervened in ~32 domestic violence, child abuse and related cases. The second is called Swastho Shongini (meaning Health Partner in local language) and is geared towards creating a low-cost, scalable program for improving healthcare, especially among rural children, adolescents and women, by training village women to become evangelists on health issues including hygiene and nutrition. During the year this team of 24 Swastho Shonginis continued to visit and interact with various families and gather health data. In addition, they conducted various Village Level Medical Camps where visiting doctors treated patients and free medicines were distributed.