From August 2016 to Nov 2019, AIHF/NHI provided cardiac care services to the entire population of Kumaon Himalayas through its Cardiac Centre based at Base Hospital, Almora. It located two cardiologists along with a staff of seven people on a full-time basis, with 2D Echocardiography, TMT and a four-bedded coronary care unit, so that all acute cardiac emergencies could be handled locally. This helped bring down mortality of acute coronary syndromes dramatically to around 5%.
Uttarayana Hospital, located in remote areas of Kumaon, adjoining Almora town, and AIHF have been jointly reaching out to a large number of the under-privileged and under-served remote populace of Uttarakhand State.
As part of this endeavour, more than 20,000 attendees have been screened in 76 Health Camps and more than 100 OPD sessions. In addition, 24 Goshthies, besides 23 School Health Talks have been held from 2016 to 2019 when in 2020 an abrupt halt was brought to these by the Corona pandemic. More than 40 patients screened from the health camps have undergone Open Heart and bypass surgeries at NHI. In May 2018, an Advanced Cardiac Life Support Mobile Clinic, equipped with diagnostic equipments, was launched as part of this initiative. It has indeed taken a modern healthcare delivery clinic to the doorsteps of the remote village populace, driving the initiative of servicing their needs further. This initiative has been overwhelmingly accepted and praised by the local beneficiaries.
Camps have been held in such remote areas as 'Supi' (The second last inhabited village in Uttarakhand towards the Chinese border), which are not even at the road head. Over 175 camps have been held and nearly 33,800 patients treated. Basic diagnostic facilities like Blood Pressure, Blood Sugar and ECG are provided on the spot and those needing advanced care are brought to NHI for free treatment.
We take pride in our pioneering work in medical communication to children (School Health Initiative) and to the bourgeoise class with the aim of sensitizing them to the reasons for the epidemic of lifestyle disorders and how to prevent them. We conduct workshops for representative brand ambassadors from remote districts like Bageshwar, Champawat, Almora, Chamoli, Pithoragarh and Rudraprayag etc. with the aim that they would further teach and communicate the message to the villages in their jurisdiction to improve their health status with very salutary and verifiable results. Continuing Medical Education (CME) programmes for doctors, public interactions and talks for laymen have been held on a monthly basis for the last 20 years.
Realizing that seeds of lifestyle disorders are sown in childhood, the ‘NHI School Initiative’ was launched in 2016. This involved holding interactive workshops & lectures for students of classes 9th to 12th to sensitize the children to the epidemic of lifestyle disorders. ‘NHI School Health Book’, covering lifestyle, personal hygiene, and basic health tips, was published for wider health information dissemination. Under the aegis of this program, NHI’s Senior Consultants have delivered 25 Health Talks in Private and Govt. Schools in Delhi and NCR. Over and above this, 23 Health Talks have been delivered at remotely located schools of the Almora region of Uttarakhand State. A short article on this innovative idea of NHI has been published in the Indian Pediatrics Journal 2018.
We established the Tele Medicine Programme between Almora, Supi and other remote areas of Uttarakhand and NHI, with the aim of taking advanced cardiac care and expertise of specialists in Delhi to the areas where one couldn't have even imagined. Telemedicine services are used for providing routine consults for 2 hours every day from NHI in Delhi to the patients in Uttarayana Hospital in Almora. The same is also being provided three times a week to Govt. Hospital Jewar, Gautam Buddha Nagar, Uttar Pradesh.