Punjabi Hospital
Punjabi Hospital serves a population of some 300,000 villagers around Varansi in the heart of India. Dr. Bhagwan Das Arora, a retired oral surgeon is the volunteer director of the hospital. With Shadhika funding in the year 2000, Dr. Arora launched a two-year campaign addressing two of the major challenges facing India today: high infant mortality and morbidity, and an extremely high rate of population growth.
Punjabi Hospital will send out a team to visit each village in the district and will hold town meetings there. They will organize pregnant women in the community to come for a 3 to 4-day "camp" at the hospital, where they will be fed and attend talks, demonstrations, and classes on nutrition, self care, and well baby care, as well as seminars on birth control methods, and presentations on the need for birth control. Camps will be held every two weeks for two years -- this will cover the district.
From each team one or two promising young women will be selected for further training. These women will serve as liaisons from the village to the Hospital, and as local resource persons to the camp attendees.