Healthcare
The healthcare infrastructure in Kolkata is improving, but is mainly available to just the middle and upper classes.
Hope is trying is striving to redress this imbalance, offering free health care and support for people living in the slums. We currently provide healthcare for over 100,000 patients.
Hope Children’s Hospital - help for ‘nowhere children’
Street children find it almost impossible to be treated by government hospitals on the grounds of overcrowding or staff fear of infection from the child (many children suffer from scabies). Hope Hospital was opened in 2008 to treat children from the streets and the slums. These children may have both physical and mental illnesses. They need nutrition, shelter and care as well as medicine.
All treatment at the hospital is free. It has fully equipped diagnostic centres and an outpatients department, 30 beds on two wards and an operating theatre. A special unit is being developed for children suffering from infectious skin diseases.
Clinics – improving awareness of what is available
India has one of the highest child mortality rates in the world, caused by the migrant nature of the population, high illiteracy rates, overwhelming poverty, malnourishment and low levels of health awareness. We run 35 free health care clinics in the poorest slums in Kolkata.
These clinics work alongside government run health-care institutions and the facilities of over NGOs, to ensure sick people get gast access to medical help. We have follow-up systems in place to help patients make a full recovery.
Community Health Groups
These groups are made up of teenagers and adults that have received basic health care training from us, and have learnt some teaching skills in order to pass them on. Each group gathers information on the health needs of the communities to improve our understanding of it.
Improvement of water and sanitation facilities
We have built new tube wells and latrines in the slums. We also conduct maintenance of the existing ones. This has improved access to drinking water and sanitation for areas which suffer from acute shortages of clean water and basic hygiene.