Citizen’s Health Initiative, Uttarakhand

Before I start telling you about today’s story let me give you some more update about Uttarakhand. Uttarakhand is reeling under the scorching heat.The heat wave continued unabated in Uttarakhand with the temperature hovering between 38 and 39 degree Celsius during the last three days. The streets wore a deserted look as people refrained from moving out in the afternoon due to the oppressive heat.In Dehradoon on Thursday the temperature reached to 40.8 degrees. This has broken the 39 years record. Before that in the year 1970 the maximum temperature reached to 40.6 degree. Now come to the main story.

We have covered the story of Narayani Devi and similar stories of Women Empowerment and Village Ways in last some days. Yesterday we shared the story of farmer showing new ways of pomegranate farming. I am going to share the story of Gaurav Madan today .Gaurav Madan is part of Central Himalayan Rural Action Group (CHIRAG) .

He shares

My project has been to work with Gram Panchayats in neighboring villages to create health committees within the Panchayat structure, work with these committees to understand their roles and responsibilities, come up with yearlong health action plans to address major health issues, and work to implement these plans. A large focus of organizing with Gram Panchayats on health issues has been within the framework of the National Rural Health Mission.

When I arrived at my project site and was first given the task of creating health committees, and helping these committees to create actionable health plans, I certainly acknowledged that it was going to be a steep learning curve. In fact, I had my doubts about the whole project. Not only was this my first time working on preventive health issues, and my first time working in rural India, this was the most remote place I had ever been to. The geography of the place in itself, at the foothills of the Himalayas, was a challenge I did not really understand until I began to traverse the area. My understanding grew a lot as I learned about how the National Rural Health Mission was working, what major health issues existed, the state of maternal and child health, the role of ASHAs, ANMs, and Anganwadi workers, and what had been done in the past regarding working with Panchayats on health-related topics.

MeraPahad Team posted the picture of their team (not included me 🙁 ) with various celebrities like Mir Ranjan Negi and Hemant Pandey. At forum we have a celebrity online section where we have all the past celebrity chat.We have also grilled tourism minister Mr. Prakash Pant.

See those pictures and tell which one you liked.