Overview

One of the major problems facing India is the health status of its people, particularly the women and children. We have stated in our Mission Statement our endeavor to improve the quality of health care of the poor who live in rural and remote areas. The George Foundation has introduced two major projects in the field of health care. They are:

1.	Baldev Medical and Community Centre
2.	EDPS2000 and the PHC project

In 1997, we became aware of the poor quality of primary healthcare among rural communities. Rural India faces many very serious health problems that are not adequately addressed. Government-run Primary Health Centres (PHCs) that serve the medical needs of the rural population have failed to deliver even basic healthcare to the rural population. Consequently, several communicable diseases such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, hepatitis, typhoid and others are rapidly spreading. Inadequate infrastructure, shortage of physicians, and poor management have resulted in the breakdown of many Primary Health Centers run by the government.

In the year 2000, the government of Tamil Nadu assigned one of its PHCs (Bagalur PHC that serves 80,000 people) to The George Foundation to "co-manage" its operations. Within less than one year, this PHC became a model institution in all of Tamil Nadu, delivering quality healthcare to its population. This was accomplished with the implementation of a diagnostic and health management system (EDPS2000 described in the attachment) developed by The George Foundation, improvement of the physical infrastructure, and through the implementation of superior management procedures.

The foundation gradually withdrew its staff from the Bagalur PHC towards the end of 2003, after the EDPS system was tested by a team of medical doctors from Johns Hopkins earlier in the year, and subsequently approved for wider application at the district level and beyond.

Separately, the Foundation constructed its own medical and community centre (Baldev Medical & Community Centre) in Hosur Taluk, Tamil Nadu, to demonstrate how healthcare, health education and many essential rural community services can be delivered in a cost-effective way within a private model. Once again, within a period of 18 months, the Baldev Centre became a model institution serving a rural population of over 15,000 in 17 villages.

[ home | projects | news | volunteer | donate | contact ]