A Rural Health Clinic in Irumbanthangal Village
December 2007
A Rural Health Clinic was set up on December 2007 by the Chest Foundation of India in Irumbanthangal Village in Kanchipuram District.
According to Dr. Raj B Singh, “the clinic was set up to help patients in the area, particularly those with respiratory problems and also to identify any lacuna, if any, in the existing health-care facilities. The clinic will not provide basic health care but also support existing health care workers and facilities and optimise their utilisation by providing information and guidance to the village population”.
The clinic is run every Sunday from 9 a.m to 12 p.m where people from Irumbanthangal and the surrounding villages can go and get themselves tested and treated for various ailments. Sputum tests for TB, urine tests and blood count tests are done at the lab.
There is a full-time lab technician who does the tests and identifies the patients, there is a part time visiting Doctor, a Pharmacist and a full-time village health worker.
Once patients are identified, medicines are provided at subsidised rates according to the Doctor’s prescriptions. Since the clinic was set up over 2000 to 2500 patients have been treated for various ailments including diabetics and high blood pressure.
Dr. Saravanan the visiting Doctor feels there has been a lot of progress and due to regular medication most patients remain asymptomatic. This year in spite of the rains and winter weather there have been very few complaints. He says hypersensitive and diabetic patients are benefitted by the free drugs, they get regularly and many poor patients are benefitted by this service.
For some patients due to continuous monitoring and increase in dosage of medicines there has been a marked improvement. This year so far, they have not shown any recurrence of symptoms.
The health workers visit the different villages and talks to the patients to get feedback as to how the medicines have helped them and encourages them to keep up with the treatment for better results.
There are at least 50-60 patients who visit on an average every week. Most of the identified patients come back for continued treatment. Also, quite a few patients come in for minor ailments and rae cured within a week or two.
Detailed records are maintained for over 600 villagers including family background, habits, treatment history etc.