Digital Village: Kaiyal Village (India)
Kaiyal Village in Gujarat, India, addresses significant healthcare challenges for rural women through SEWA’s telemedicine initiative. With limited access to healthcare facilities, SEWA has empowered local Aagewans to provide preventive care and health awareness for non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as diabetes and hypertension. Using the Swasthya Samudaay app, Aagewans link women to doctors, provide affordable treatments, and ensure lifestyle improvements, enhancing access to timely, cost-effective healthcare in the village.
Digital Innovation
SEWA has introduced a telemedicine channel with the help of SEWA Aagewan at the Kaiyal Village in the Kadi Block of Mehsana District, where healthcare clinics are unavailable at the village level, and members depend on doctors in private hospitals and clinics. Aagewans are SEWA members who naturally tend to take on a leadership role in their community. They are champions of the SEWA philosophy and are the driving force of SEWA’s organizing and advocacy efforts. They occupy a unique position in the organizational structure and form the link between staff and the membership base. In this scenario, the Aagewans provide women with information on non-communicable diseases (NCD), vaccination of children, breastfeeding, mental health and diseases occurring due to climate change like heat stroke, dengue, malaria, waterborne diseases, etc. They regularly visit their allocated areas and carry out health awareness drives, provide women with accurate information, link them to doctors, initiate their medication and periodically follow up with them to check if they are making the necessary changes in their lifestyle (regarding food, exercise, etc.). A mobile application called the Swasthya Samudaay app helps the Aagewans carry out their duties and record important details of the women’s health in the village. The Aagewans can record all the details of their visits in this app. They can also note the member’s health information and share the telemedicine number. According to the Aagewans, explaining various diseases to members and the precautions to prevent them was extremely challenging. Still, there have been some radical and positive changes thanks to posters and digital training (available from the Swasthya Samudaay app).
Photo Credit: SEWA Rural health tracking video
I am a farm labourer, and I frequently suffer from fever. When I went to the dispensary, the doctor told me that I had less blood in my body, but all the remedies that he suggested were way beyond our budget, so we returned to our village. Our SEWA centre sisters provided me with economically feasible medication solutions, including remedies from available resources in my house. They suggested I eat fruits like pomegranates, drink green gram soup and eat carrots, beetroots, etc. I followed their counsel, and today, there has been a remarkable improvement in my health. Also, when we connect with the doctor through the telemedicine service provided by SEWA, he quickly sends us the prescription for the medicine. We immediately picked it up and were fit and fine after consuming it. This has led to saving both our time and travel costs, and we don’t lose our daily wages because we are ill-disposed.
–Meenaben Thakor, SEWA member, Kaiyal Village, Mehsana District.
Under SEWA’s telemedicine initiative, after properly understanding the patient’s symptoms, the doctor sends the names of the required tests and medicines through text messages to the patient. Detailed information is provided to members about various diseases, along with an explanation of how to care for their health. As SEWA possess digital records of their members in the Swasthya Samudaay app, they can provide them with precise care during their illness. The Swasthya Samudaay application also enables SEWA to explain to women the need to be healthy and the precautionary steps to prevent various diseases.
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