By Santosh Digal
Bombay, Feb. 13,2020: To address health concerns of the poor, the Health Promotion Trust (HPT) of the Archdiocese of Bombay has envisioned HPT 2030 with renewed commitment, Fides has learned.
Ten years ago with a dynamic vision, “Health for All by 2020” was started. This vision flowed into a grassroots-centered mission statement: “To ensure better health awareness, strengthen existing health facilities, ensure accountability of the health administration, and lay more emphasis on preventive health by encouraging holistic health therapies for the poor and the marginalized.”
“Taking its cue from the philosophy that ‘prevention is better than cure’, the HPT team brainstormed and implemented various projects to translate the above vision and mission into reality,” Father Rocky Banz, director of HPT said.
Ten years later, the archdiocese of Bombay looks back at the tremendous impact of its preventive health interventions on poor and marginalized urban and rural communities.
“We feel a sense of immense pride, joy, and fulfillment. Through our programs, we have reached out to Katkari tribal communities, fisherfolk, farmers, domestic workers, women and children in slums, HIV + children and adults, commercial sex workers, migrants, senior citizens, school students, and the clergy,” Father Banz said.
The beneficiaries of HPT are now aware of the importance of taking responsibility for their holistic health, he said.
The following are some of the highlights of our decade-long preventive healthcare venture:
In 2010, HPT launched ‘barefoot health worker’ trainings in collaboration with nearly 50 community-based centers in the archdiocese. The HPT team enrolled motivated individuals from communities in Mumbai, Thane, and Raigad district in a two-year preventive healthcare training program.
Upon successful completion, each member received a Barefoot Health Worker certificate, after which they began imparting their skills and knowledge to residents in their respective communities. Some of them even got government jobs as ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activist) workers.
In 2017, HPT identified and enrolled a few committed health workers in an advanced preventive healthcare training.
Today, HPT has a team of 22 paid health workers in Raigad district who have completed this advanced training, and are disseminating preventive healthcare information in their areas and villages.
A majority of these health workers are from the Katkari tribe (indigenous), which is considered one of the most primitive tribes in Maharashtra state, Western India. They have been instrumental in helping to revive sustainable and affordable traditional healthcare practices.
Auxiliary Bishop Bosco Penha said the sick, the oppressed and the poor depend entirely on God, and beneath the burden of their trials stand in need of His healing.
Only those who personally experience suffering are then able to comfort others. There are so many kinds of grave suffering: incurable and chronic diseases, psychological diseases, situations calling for rehabilitation or palliative care, numerous forms of disability, children’s or geriatric diseases.
“At times, human warmth is lacking in our approach to these. What is needed is a personalized approach to the sick, not just of curing, but also of caring, in view of an integral human healing. In experiencing illness, individuals not only feel threatened in their physical integrity but also in the relational, intellectual, affective and spiritual dimensions of their lives,” the bishop said.
For this reason, in addition to therapy and support, they expect care and attention. In a word, love. At the side of every sick person, there is also a family, which itself suffers, and is in need of support and comfort, he added.