The Arogya Sathi (A.S.) Project (1998- 2001)
The Arogya Sathi (A.S.) Project by the Arogya Sathi (A.S.) team of CEHAT (1998-2001) was supported by NOVIB. This project added a new, health dimension to the process of empowerment in three remote rural areas in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, where the three People's Organizations with whom SATHI had been collaborating were active. This was done on the one hand by initiating a self-reliant approach of providing First Contact Care as part of a Primary Health Care approach and on the other hand, the team?s strategy added the dimension of health rights, to the ongoing struggles of these People's Organizations to establish people's right to livelihood.
The A.S. Project thus resulted in these people's organizations taking up health work on their agenda in a systematic manner. In two and a half years, it created a new set of skilled, women Community Health Workers, the Aarogya Saathis, who provided First Contact Care in the community and thereby saved lakhs of rupees on health care for the cash-starved marginalized people in remote areas. This project also made the Primary Health Care system more people-sensitive as an effect of local advocacy. The creation and use of high quality appropriate training and awareness material on Primary Health Care (including two volumes of multi-coloured pictorial training manuals for the training of non-literate/neo-literate Community Health Workers) was also a distinct achievement. The A. S. team also emerged as a resource team for the Primary Health Care movement by participating in broader advocacy through the People's Health Assembly process in India in the year 2000.