::: BIRDS :::

In accordance with the stated objectives, BIRDS took up several social welfare measures aiming mainly at the vulnerable sections of the society. In this section, a description of those measures is given.

Mother and Child care
Safe Mother and Child Survival (SMCS) program is implemented wit the support of the Catholic Relief Service (CRS) through Kurnool Diocese Social Service Society (KDSSS) in Rudravaram mandal. Before starting of this program, BIRDS carried out a study in the mandal to look into the health condition of the child and pregnant women, delivery systems, and immunization facility. It was found that there are only 2 Health Centers and 5 Sub Health Centers, in the mandal, staffed by seven Ancillary Nurse and Mid-wifery (ANM) and 7 Male Health Workers (MHW) to serve a population of 43,790.

The study revealed that the Infant Mortality at Birth is very high amount to 10 deaths for every 100 births. The awareness levels of the women on health aspects were found to be very low owing to low women literacy rate and practice of traditional healing methods. It was found that the pregnant women do not care for regular health check-ups during the pregnancy nor the services of ANMs were utilized properly. Even the services of Traditional Birth Attendents (TBA) are not used for deliveries. Minimum health care measures such as administering tetanus, folic acid (red pills) and a Cole storm was not practiced. There was no awareness on immunization.

During the reporting period, 25 VHWs, 2 Cluster Coordinators and one Mandal Coordinator worked for SMCS program. CRS-KDSS has trained the program staff in book-keeping and accounting procedures. They identified and enrolled 4-months pregnant women, and below 2-year infants, in the mandal. They supplied 1-litre oil, 1.5 Kg Wheat and 2.5 Kg Bulgur powder for each child and mother, once in a month (powder supplied only in 1st year), to ensure that they have nutritious food. In some villages, the villagers formed as a group to help the MC, CO and ANM in distributing the food items voluntarily.

The staff was in close touch with the villagers, and enrolled the pregnant women. From time to time gave advice on health, in coordination with village ANMs and ICDS workers for carrying out the immunization work. The staff organized village group meetings and awareness camps on the health systems by singing songs, folk dances, dramas and film shows. In addition to this work, the staff took steps on improving the villager’s knowledge in health education.

Major challenges faced by BIRDS staff in implementing the “Safe Delivery and Child Care” programme and strategies adopted to overcome those challenges were:

KDSSS personnel training helped to overcome the difficulty of staff in keeping health records in CRS format
Counseling of village elders at some places helped the staff to replace unsuitable VHW candidates with suitable ones
Spending more time in problematic villages resulted in VHC formation in entire target area
Difficulty of carrying out immunization simultaneously with food distribution was overcome by clubbing it with ANM’s village visit
Inability of mothers to remember correct Date of Birth (DOB) of thier children is overcome by making it mandatory for VHW to record it immediately after delivery and transfer it into hospital records through ANM
With the consent of our KDSSS officials, names of women and children, who could not be enlisted due to their absence, were included for food distribution, oil and medicines.
Improved coordination between staff and ANMs helped in carrying out joint visits
Rate of immunized improved after it was put as a pre-condition for food distribution, apart from saving time by changing the practice of door-to-door immunization
By making Village Committee Members (VMC) responsible for food distribution at village level, returning of non-distributed food stock to go down was stopped
Difficulty in writing and submission of Quarterly Progress reports to KDSSS was overcome through a training
Women attendance in health meetings was improved by conducting them in times suitable to them, CRS training camps, free medical check-ups by qualified doctors and free distribution of medicines to the needy

Impact of SMCS Programme

SN	Description	Number
1	Total Pregnant	1239
2	Pregnant taking food	964
3	Pregnant those not taking food	275
4	Total deliveries	442
5	Hospital deliveries	315
6	Pregnant undergone 3 chekups	316
7	Pregnant taken 2 TT injections	314
8	Pregnant taken 90 to 100 Red Pills	308
9	Pregnant cases encouraged for hospital deliveries	162
10	Cases taking colostruns	336
11	Children weighed at birth	274
12	Children in the womb	10
13	Maternal death [142 days of delivery]	0
14	12 months old children	821
15	Children immunized in the year	510
16	Children taking 'A' vitamin in the year	579
17	9 months old children	794
18	9 months children given additional food	736
19	Children identified as under-weight	2236

Health Camps
Responding to the need from the Rudravaram mandal, BIRDS conducted health camps at Thuvvapalli, Harinagaram, Kotakonda, Chinnakambalur, Chilakalur, BNR Palle, Peruru and Gonam Palle. During the Health camps BIRDS found, so many people of Rudravaram mandal were suffering with eye sight defects and other eye problems. This has prompted conduct of eye-camp at Rudravaram.

BIRDS organized eye-camps with the help of local ophthalmologist Dr.Parameshwara Reddy the programme was brought to the notice of the villagers, who were suffering with eye problems. The Eye Camp was conducted on 24/10/2003 at Rudravaram Public Health Center(PHC). 457 villagers got their eyes tested at this camp, of which 350 were treated with medicines while the remaining 107 cases were referred for surgical treatment. Medicines were supplied for all the patients free of cost. 63 patients were operated by Dr.Bhaskar Rao on 29th,30th and 31st of October’03. This is one of the successful health programme.