Gramin Vikas Sansthan

At present Mother and Child Healthcare (MCH) activities are being run as a part of Sure Start Project, a joint venture of PATH India and CARE. The target of the project is to motivate the community for improvement in the status of mother and infant health care through effective community participation in selected districts of Uttar Pradesh. The project seeks to develop understanding of family and community so people are activated to demand health services related to mother and child health. It also seeks to extend complementary cooperation for implementing medical and health services in a proper way.

Sure Start project is being implemented in 40 per cent gram panchayats each in Bachhrawan and Shivgarh blocks of Rae Bareli district.

Another support for MCH programme comes through the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM). This project is underway in 39 gram panchayats of Shivgarh development block of Rae Bareli district.

To mobilise community, activities like health education, health fair, workshops, puppet show, street play, etc., are organised. Attempts have been made to bring about attitudinal change on issues like breast feeding, supplementary nutrition, pre- and ante- natal check-up, weighing of the new borns, breast feeding within 24 hours of birth, etc. For this activities like sas bahu sammelan (meetings of mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law) were organised.

Polio is a curse all over the country. To tackle the deadly disease, an activity to eradicate polio was taken up in 30 revenue villages of Shivgarh development block. Under this, regular administration of polio drops to children between 0 to 5 years, booth coverage on NID-SNID days, identification of left households, etc., were done. Apart from this health camps, village cleanliness campaigns, meetings of mothers-in-law and daughers-in-law, conference of religious leaders were organised.

Earlier, GVS acted as Counter Part of Catholic Relief Services, North India. Under this, the organisation worked with 12 operating partners in five districts Rae Bareli, Lucknow, Barabanki, Sultanpur and Bahraich. As CP, GVS provided monitoring and supervisory support to the OPs.