Tribal Health Initiative views health as a state of mental, social and economic well-being and not the mere absence of disease. Our health interventions go beyond merely providing curative and preventive medical services. We see our farming and craft initiatives as being directly connected to maintaining health and well-being in the communities we serve. Gram Swaraj is the ultimate aim and we are doing that too through active interventions at the Panchayat level
Broadly speaking the following are the activities of THI:
Tribal Hospital
We run a 35 bed secondary level hospital which admits patients with medical, surgical and obstetric problems. The hospital serves as a base for our health outreach programme.
Community Health Program
Our health outreach program provides simple curative, preventive and ambulance services to 25 villages in the Sittilingi valley.
Health Training
We have been training tribal girls as Health Worker Nurses and mid aged tribal women as Health Auxiliaries. They form the main stay of our health work.
Farming Initiative
Our Farming Initiative aims to enable farmers to practice economically and ecologically sound agriculture. We have 700 farmers now along with 450 women in the Women Entrepreneurship Association.
Craft Initiative
The Craft Initiative enables local Lambadi women to become economically self-reliant while preserving their traditional embroidery.
We have frequent camps for young medicos to get sensitized to rural/ tribal health and as a follow up a Travel Fellowship for a year for 5 enterprising doctors
Our Farmers Collective won the Panchayat elections in 2020 and now have a non political Panchayat administration which is soon becoming a model Panchayat in Tamil Nadu
Watershed Program
This helps to build up the water table in the region and is vital for farming.