India

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With 1.1 billion people, India is the largest democracy in the world.  India has seen recent achievements in social and economic development and increasingly progressive health policies, yet its health sector remains inadequately equipped to meet the needs of all people.  Demand for high quality family planning services are increasing; maternal mortality and morbidity are high, and HIV threatens certain populations.

Since 1988, EngenderHealth’s work in India has helped expand and improve family planning and reproductive and maternal health services. Today, EngenderHealth works in 14 states and is known for its technical leadership, community-based programs, and innovative approaches as we focus on:

 
Innovations in Family Planning
As a lead partner in a project called Innovations in Family Planning Services, EngenderHealth worked with India’s Department of Family Welfare to improve health services in two northern states, Uttar Pradesh and Uttaranchal. This included:

  • Building the capacity of health care providers to offer higher quality services that respond to client’s individual needs
  • Developing and introducing more than 36 training curricula and materials that emphasize counseling and clinical skills on family planning, emergency obstetric and newborn care, and management of sexually transmitted infections and reproductive tract infections.

 
Addressing HIV and AIDS
By joining forces with local health ministries, nonprofit agencies, and community-based organizations in the affected regions, EngenderHealth is creating sustainable programs that are both cost-efficient and highly effective in combating India’s HIV epidemic. This includes:

  • Enhancing the ability of health care workers to provide quality HIV treatment, care, and support;
  • Integrating HIV and AIDS prevention and treatment with reproductive health care services;
  • Training and supporting peer educators to assist with HIV prevention and stigma reduction
    • EngenderHealth has developed training curricula and job aids for peer educators in both English and regional languages;
  • Helping health providers overcome fears about HIV and AIDS and biases against people living with HIV or AIDS ;
  • Addressing the rights and needs of health workers to:
    •  exercise standard infection prevention measures;
    •  have access to postexposure prophylaxis;
    •  be protected from workplace discrimination if known or suspected to be HIV-positive.

Along the coast of Andhra Pradesh, where the burden of India’s HIV epidemic is the greatest, and in Karnataka, EngenderHealth participates in “Samastha,” an integrated HIV and AIDS prevention, care, support, and treatment initiative funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development. Through Samastha, EngenderHealth:

  • Builds the capacity of health care providers to offer quality care to clients living with HIV;
  • Tests the feasibility of offering integrated family planning, reproductive health and HIV services for HIV-positive women.
    • Working with State AIDS Control Societies, the HIV Positive Women’s Network, and other community-based groups, EngenderHealth has trained more than 50 clinical and community providers to offer integrated services to HIV-positive women.

In Kerala, EngenderHealth has worked with the HIV Positive Peoples’ Networks and the State AIDS Control Society in Kerala (KSACS) in a demonstration project testing a rights-based approach to providing quality health care to people living with HIV. The project focused training providers to understand clients’ rights, including the right to safe, quality services—free from stigma and discrimination—and the right to be treated with dignity and respect.

 
Involving Men As Partners 
EngenderHealth’s Men As Partners® (MAP) program works with the Gujarat Network for People Living with HIV and the Uttar Pradesh Welfare for People Living with HIV/AIDS Society to introduce the MAP approach in an effort to reduce violence against women. Within 10 months, the project trained 47 men living with HIV to serve as MAP advocates. These advocates act as role models in the community, demonstrating how men can enjoy a good quality of life while helping to reduce HIV transmission by examining their attitudes about manhood and masculinity.  

 
Ensuring the Reproductive Health of Youth
In Bihar and Jharkhand, EngenderHealth has collaborated with the International Center for Research on Women to sensitize health care staff for provision of youth-friendly reproductive health services. EngenderHealth has trained practitioners in private and public health service facilities that serve more than 176 villages in the area.

 
Providing Quality Health Care
EngenderHealth’s innovative approaches to quality improvement help health care providers assess their services, identify shortcomings at their sites, and find effective solutions. EngenderHealth has collaborated with the country’s Ministry of Health to provide simple, low-cost, and practical quality improvement tools that account for clients’ rights and provider needs, encourage counseling and informed choice, and promote infection prevention.