Medical Home Care Service - a community-led program
Status: 
Time needed:
Two weeks or more
Step:
1
Caring for elderly relatives who suffer from chronic illness and/or Alzheimer's Disease is a huge burden for the very poor of Vijayapuram. The quality of life for the bed-ridden elderly patients can be miserable, as the financial burden of taking relatives to seek medical attention can be too much for some. This Task seeks fresh ideas, links, advice and fund-raising ideas around setting up a community-programme where medical and palliative care can be provided to bed-ridden patients, by locally trained community volunteers and trained medical staff such as Nurses and Doctors. See Joseph's personal letter below to all Neighbours.
Dear neighbours,
My project is medical home care for the poor and the needy old patients especially the Alzheimers patients in my village. First of all I may invite your attention to the fact that in our country there is no practice of Medical Home Care Service for the old patients by Doctors and nurses. So the poor and old including the Alzhiemers patients do not get proper attention and nursing in their homes. The poor families are unable to provide them with nutritious food sufficient medicines and medical care. Even though there are Multi Speciality Hospitals, they are out of reach for the poor as they are expensive and profit motivated. In Government Hospital also there are no facilities for better treatment to the poor due to the corruption among the Doctors and other staff. Considering these financial problems the poor families do not care to take sick old patients to hospital. This is very miserable and sympathetic. The poor people are unable to provide their dear ones with the expensive treatment. In these circumstances the poor old and chronic diseased will become victims of huge debt poverty and disappointment. So it is my great wish to help the poor sick old patients by providing them with free medical care nutritious food, treatment, as well as medical supplies. I was inspired to help the sick and old people by my parents.
But at present, even though I have good will to do all these I require some help out side to run this just like the vehicles need four wheel to run.
Thanking you
yours
Joseph
Picture:
Project: Medical home care service
Hello Carolyn and other nabuur friends,
We are very glad inform all of you that our facilitator madam Carolyn and Mr.Philip visited us on 2nd December 20009. It was a thrilling experience to us. We are very greatfull to those who have contributed Indian Rs. 14400 towards the development of our project. As my mother is seriously ill and is hospitilized for more than one month till now, I could not send a detaild message and the photograph taken together with the details of our work. I will send them later on.
Thanking you
joseph A M for HRESEDC
Hi- I have moved our conversation to this section of the site as it is most appropriate here: (for background to this post- plese see the Welcome Priyaa posts under the section- Meet the Neighbours)
Hello Priayaa- it’s great to read your informative post! Thanks for doing all this research. In fact I haven’t heard of the Wockhardt Foundation- however I have heard and read that the mobile medical unit is a popular and effective way of getting medical treatment to the rural and disadvantaged in India. The key to these mobile vans is that they come with clinicians- that being trained nurses and a medical doctor. Right now the Medical Home Care program does not have a designated nurse/doctor team. Joseph would need to provide information on whether Dr Koyakutty still visits the patients or not- and how often. Getting a van is important but without trained staff to actually provide the home-based care it simply would act as a transportation car. We would be very grateful if you could make the call and find out information about these vans- and whether NGO has advice on how this community can secure one- OR tap into an existing program (we do not always have to re-invent the wheel!) Any info you find would be wonderful!
We have reviewed an article about a home-based program in kerela last year (I have attached it here again http://southasia.oneworld.net/fromthegrassroots/barefoot-healthcare-prov...) and this group up in Mallamapuram (Kerala) have developed a very effective program to help the bed-ridden patients. It is almost entirely volunteer-based. We have not really been able to make any contact with this group- even though I have tried to find out more about them via the NPCC. Their model, I believe, is one that can be replicated- anywhere. It relies mainly on local volunteers and very very small donations from the local community. It is not reliant upon international charity or large donations from within India. I posted this comment on Nabuur about 4-5 months ago: The three key points we can learn from the NNPC programme is a) the programme needs to be adapted to the Indian (local) scenario, b) the very first palliative care clinic opened with only one part time doctor and 2 volunteers; and c) the initial pilot programme of NNPC was tested for 3 years before it was expanded. From that perspective I think we're on the right track. Anyway Priyaa if you are able to find any info make contact with this group in regards to their programme, again, that would be extremely helpful.
By the way- I have spent some time looking at the links you posted here last week. Thanks for those. Two of them outline a number of NGO’s in India, and it is a comprehensive list! I have noted a few of them which I am hoping to investigate but it’s a bit hard as a lot of the NGO’s don’t have websites or here is very little info about them on the internet. Again, this is where local knowledge and local contacts come in handy! The Voice4India website was very informative as it outlines all sorts of policy documents and government social services for elderly Indians. I will continue to keep an eye on that website. I was actually VERY surprised to see the number of Nursing Homes for the elderly not only in Kerala but also in other states in India.
So again- what we need to do is:
a) Investigate the possibilities of securing a mode of transportation for the elderly patients- either as a mobile medical unit or an ambulance van
b) Investigate how we can attract a small clinical team to visit patients at least once a week or even twice a week.
c) Continue to find ways to educate the local community about dementia, how to care for dementia patients and also how to look after patients at the palliative stages of their lives. I also wonder if we can tap into the Non- resident Indian community in places such as Dubai because from what Joseph’s report indicates, there are elderly patients who are left alone at home whilst their adult children work in foreign countries. Surely they would have a vested interest in ensuring that their parents are looked after.