Family Adoption Program Information
Family Adoption Programme:In India, around 65.5 % of the population resides in rural settings (as per 2020 statistics) whereas availability of health care facilities and services are skewed towards urban set ups. Though adequate healthcare supplies exist in the community, it is the access to healthcare to a rural citizen that is a major concern. Issues like health illiteracy, ignorance about communicable and non-communicable diseases, means to reach health care facility, services, take time off from their daily wages work and workforce shortages are some of the barriers that limits timely and quality health related awareness and care leading to a scenario of 'Scarcity in abundance'. Hence there is a need to take measures to make healthcare more accessible to the rural and needy population and impart community based and community oriented training to budding healthcare professionals.
Details of Initiative:The Family Adoption Program has been implemented by the Department of Community Medicine, Shri M. P. Shah Government Medical College Jamnagar as per the guidelines of the National Medical Council. Under this program 2-5 five families per student have been adopted by first, second and third year MBBS students, thus around 1000 families from villages of Jamnagar have been adopted. According to the guidelines every medical student throughout his medical course will make frequent visits to adopted families for about five years and provide various medical services such as providing health education on how to prevent water borne and food borne diseases, prevention of serious diseases like malaria and dengue etc., How to maintain personal, family and environmental hygiene. Students will treat common diseases like fever, cold, cough, diarrhoea. Students inform the people about various government schemes, provide information about child vaccination, encourage expectant mothers for institutional delivery, screen adult members of the household for diseases like blood pressure and diabetes and refer them to district level hospital if any seriously ill person is found in the household.
Thus Shri M. P. Shah Medical College has undertaken a mission to bring various health oriented services to the doorsteps of rural areas.
Outcomes / Achievements:
- Students learnt various principles of community diagnosis.
- It has conceptualized the role of host and environment in disease initiation and progress.
- They learnt largely to see any disease as community level rather than a single case at the same time they understood the role of social factors in health and disease.
- They learn to assess various clinical skills at community level.
- They independently learnt to solve problem at community level and understood the referral system.
- It has been useful to in the context of development of communication skill, managerial skill and leadership qualities among students.