Report of Activities 2010 - 11

Rural Health Centre - Report

2010 - 2011

1. The new Outpatient block inaugurated in June 2010 has helped in reducing the overcrowding, thereby ensuring a greater efficiency in patient management.
2. More than 19000 patients have accessed the RHC this year.
3. The rates for consultation and laboratory investigations have been upwardly revised by about 10 – 15% from June 2011.
4. The diagnostic centre continues to be as busy as ever doing more than 23000 tests this year.
5. Dental Centre: Dental chair and other dental equipment donated by Dr Ms Meena Desai was commissioned in November 2010. After initial teething troubles, the room was ready for use and from January, Dr Kalpana, Dental Surgeon from Madanapalle, visits once a week providing dental cover.
6. Ultrasound Machine: A new Colour Doppler (Sonoscape SSI 5000) was purchased from donations received at a cost of approximately Rs 10,00,000/-. About 5 scans are done daily. Dr Vishnu Reddy, a sonologist, visits once a fortnight to do more complex scans.
7. Conference: Dr Kartik presented a paper “Tensions in Livelihoods – A Rural Perspective” at the IAEVG (International Association for Educational and Vocational Guidance) – JIVA Conference in Bengaluru in October 2010
   This paper has been selected for publication as a chapter for the forthcoming book " Handbook of Career Development – International Perspectives” to be published by Wiley International.
   Dr Radha Gopal and Dr Kamakshi Kartik have agreed to be co authors for this chapter. Dr Radha will be adding a unit on Livelihoods, how to make it more attractive for youth to stay back in the villages and build a model for sustainability, incorporating common use of common resources, traditional wisdom etc. Dr Kamakshi will be adding a unit on adolescent girls and young women, their choices and tensions.
8. Distance Fellowship in Diabetology from CMC Vellore: Dr Kartik is presently doing the course and is scheduled for completion in July 2011.
9. America India Foundation: Ms Lindsey Adkisson, a Masters in Community Development from the USA, has been working on documenting Pesticide and Health issues at the RHC. She also works with RVSDA (Dr Radha Gopal) documenting farming practices in the valley. Her contribution to understanding the issues related to pesticides has been tremendous. The RHC and RVSDA have applied for a fellow for the coming year, to take this project forward. We intend looking at environment, health, sanitation, food security, resource management as an integrated whole and attempt to make suitable educational material for the same.
10. The Pharmacy is being run by Usha Medicals, Madanpalle, wef Jan 2011. Only medicines from LOCOST and Generic medicines are being dispensed. The outsourcing was done to reduce administrative load on the RHC. This arrangement is working well.
11. Vascular Diseases Project: Monash University, Melbourne, Australia (Drs Amanda Thrisft, Dr Roger Evans and Dr Srikanth as Principal Investigators from Monash and Drs Kartik and Kamakshi as PIs from RHC) has received a grant for a long term case control study on Hypertension in a rural population. The study envisages an in depth study of 400 hypertensives and and age and sex matched control group. We hope that the results will help in bettering our understanding of the cause factors in Hypertension and then suggest different interventions. The study is scheduled to commence in Sep 2011 running till September 2013.
    An existing building near the RHC will be used as an office and a new team consisting of one coordinator, one nurse and one lab technician will be recruited for the project.
    CMC, Vellore has expressed a keen interest in being part of this project. A formal application to the Institutional Review Board of CMC, Vellore is scheduled for July 2011. It is envisaged that this project will continue to run for 10 – 15 years to follow up both hypertensives as well as non hypertensives to understand the life course and natural history of the two groups.