The health and nutrition spectrum of the CFCD Programmes implemented by HCDI and its partners have always been focused on preventive measures, as opposed to curative measures. This is a result of the many problems faced by children and adults, especially women, living in rural areas. These problems include:
- Poor medical facilities
- Poor sanitation facilities
- Poor household hygiene
- Poor personal hygiene
- Water borne diseases caused by lack of hygiene including
- Poliomyelitis
- Neonatal tetanus
- Measles
- Diarrhoea
- Acute respiratory infections
- Tuberculosis
- Malaria
Interventions and activities undertaken
As analysed by HCDI and its implementing partners, developing hygienic living habits is pivotal to a healthier lifestyle. It is for this purpose that HCDI and its partners undertake various interventions and activities aimed at imbibing a better, and healthier, way of life. These include:
- Health education for children, adults, and the community at large, focusing on the concerns of:
- under five care
- prenatal care
- postnatal care
- environmental sanitation
- family planning
- school health
- Implementing aggressive health education programmes that aim at reducing age-old cultural practices such as believing in healing through spirits and witchcraft. These programmes also work towards gradually increasing the use of indigenous medicines within the community.
- Implementing health awareness programmes targeted especially at women with the aim to train them in health care such that they can:
- attend to minor health problems of individuals within the community
- assist in childbirth
- sell the medicines with which they are provided at a nominal cost while addressing ailments
- Persuading the government, with the assistance of the people of the community itself, to dig bore wells for clean and healthy water. Where the government is not moved to do so, HCDI and its implementing partners take over the responsibility of creating these bore wells.
- Training the community to build economic toilets behind the houses themselves where women can attend to the call of nature at any time required, thereby releasing them from the present limitation of having to do so only in the nights.
- Teaching the community to build proper drainage systems, leading to better living conditions.
- Incorporating the habit and practice of stall feeding instead of allowing pigs, who transmit diseases, to wander around the village freely.
- Implementing focused programmes, such as one to control the contraction and spreading of Malaria, where and when required.