International-Community Access to Child Health

Aims & Objectives of the Program

This is one of the Community Empowerment programs of the Helping Hands Foundation. It initiates the Primary Preventive Strategies to make the communities healthier, wealthier and prosperous.

Having worked with I-CATCH (International-Community Access to Child Health) program of the Section on International Child Health (SOICH) of the American Academy of Pediatrics, to bring about a positive behavioral change in the community, we launched native program as Community Access to Child Health (CATCH) to focus on the indigenous health problems with indigenous solutions

The behavioral change is a slow, lengthy and a continued process. The communities do not change like a bulb with a click of button, but one has to toil a lot. This is a thousand-mile journey but is traversed with a single step to begin with. We have learnt with experience that the communities work like a crop. We have to give a lot of input to begin with and then continue doing so. The people change after the desired time and effort has been there. And they change like the harvest of a crop. Then it takes little time to adopt the desired attitudes.
We have, therefore, planned:

To take up community awareness programs at the people doorstep.
To work in perpetual cycles of motivation regarding various issues.
To interact with people individually and collectively at all levels like at home, at masjids, at community centers and at various camps.
To conduct seminar and establish camp for various campaigns.
To coordinate and collaborate with national and international agencies to foster our objectives

We will prioritize breastfeeding, iodized salt, vaccination, nutrition, antenatal care, hand hygiene, dental hygiene, smoking, addiction, sexual health, home violence, child abuse and safe delivery in our endeavors.

Name of Departments

Date of Establishment

8 June 2012.

Affiliations/Partnerships

Society for Special Person
Punjab welfare Trust for disabled persons

Name of Donors

Name of Geographical Area:

Al Quresh Colony Sher Shah Road Multan Punjab Pakistan.

Target Groups/Beneficiaries

Child bearing aged mothers, Mother in Laws, Mother with pregnancy and newly born babies for breastfeeding counseling, Mothers with growing aged children, Father and other decisions makers of the family related MNCH, Trained birth attendants, Traditional birth attendants, Ulma -e- Karaam, Community Activists/leaders, local teachers, counselors.

Activities/Services

We have accomplished a number of plans and strategies under the CATCH.

Our first was with the Section On International Child Health (SOICH) of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). We worked in the community for “Improving child health through maternal education”.

This went a success, though it was a long time, almost 14 months, before we could see a definite improvement in the various indicators. Our approach of using Community Health Workers (CHW) to educate mothers in community has gained a great popularity.
We have a team of CHWs that has roots in the community. Being from the community, they have access to all the homes and are able to influence the people.
We have a computerized record of the whole community and our health workers can go to them for further service provision, if the need arises.
The success story has been published at various journals & newsletters across the world as given in the below links.

References

Duncan B, Mustafa G, Staton D, Anders B, Kurbasic M, Nakakeeto M et al. Child healthcare workers in resource-limited areas improve health with innovative low-cost projects. J Trop Pediatr. 2012;58(2):120-124.
http://www.aappublications.org/content/29/7/35.1.
http://www.mdedge.com/familypracticenews/article/36907/editorial-improving-child-health-throughmaternal-education.
http://www.aappublications.org/content/31/10/39.2.
http://www.mdedge.com/familypracticenews/article/32690/infectious-diseases/limited-resourcesgreat-ideas.
http://www.mdedge.com/pediatricnews/article/40365/international-child-health-network.
pediatricnews.com

Later we have worked in the community at a wider scale, now encompassing a population of over 200,000. We are reaching the people:
1. At various global days like world women day, world children day, world sleep day etc.
2. at their homes individually.
3. at their homes collectively in the form of “corner meeting”.
4. at the schools
5. at the seminar room of the Institute of the Mother and Child Care (I-MACCA), Multan by inviting the community people mostly women or religious leaders.
6. at various camps like Flu vaccination camp or Breast-Cancer screening Camp.
We collaborated with the Stop TB Partnership and won the Round-8 grant of the Challenge Facility for Civil Society.

Fee Structure

Free.

Pricing/ Discount/ Subsidy

Free.