Search This Blog

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Community Dialogue at Deed

A sensitization meeting about the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) project in health of the Government of Arunachal Pradesh was conducted at Deed today which was attended by all the Panchayat leaders, village elders and prominent citizens of the area. The meeting, chaired by Byabang Rocket, Chairman, Master Coordination Committee, Future Generations Arunachal (FGA) was facilitated by Dr. K. Basar, DFWO, Ziro and Dr. Tage Kanno, Project Consultant, FGA. The meeting discussed about the various aspects of the PPP project under which one Primary Health Center (PHC) in each of the 16 districts in Arunachal Pradesh is being managed by NGOs. The PHC, Deed-Neelam is being managed by FGA since August 1 last.

 Dr. K. Basar, DFWO congratulated the people of Deed-Neelam for having chosen their PHC for PPP in the district. He shared his experiences with PPP and informed that PHCs being managed by NGOs are comparatively better than those managed by the government. Arunachal Pradesh was awarded the best performing state under NRHM due to innovation with PPP in India, he informed.

 Ms. Toko Rich, ex-Chairperson of Lower Subansiri Zilla Parishad advised the management of FGA to provide quality service to the people and the PHC staff to discharge their duties sincerely. She also exhorted the communities to cooperate with the management for the greater interest of the people. Other leaders expressed their concern about the future of the PHC in the light of their bad experience in the past. They were also apprehensive that infrastructure development may be stopped due to management of the PHC by an NGO.

 Dr. Tage Kanno cleared various doubts and misunderstandings raised by the communities. He also informed that FGA participates in the PPP with three main objectives – to improve curative and promotive health care services, to increase community participation in the management of the PHC and to build the capacities of the people, especially the women in health care activities. He appealed to the participants to cooperate with the management in achieving the objectives. Unless the communities have a sense of ownership, any developmental activities cannot be sustainable, he said.

 In his concluding remark, Byabang Rocket said that FGA has been successfully managing the PHC at Sille since January 2006 and hopes to replicate that success at Deed-Neelam and Thrizino which FGA is managing since August this year. It is not only infrastructure but behavior of the people which should be used to measure development.

 It may be mentioned that the Government of Arunachal Pradesh had recently approved the management of PHC at Deed-Neelam in Lower Subansiri and Thrizino in West Kameng in addition to that at Sille in East Siang by FGA. The manangement of the PHC at Deed-Neelam was taken over by FGA on August 1, 2011 while that in Thrizino was taken over on August 4, 2011. The PPP project was launched by the Government of Arunachal Pradesh as a part of the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) in 2005.

 FGA's plan to scale up the Mothers' Training program to these new areas have already been initiated.

No comments:

Post a Comment