Health care

The health care sector aims to improve life expectancy and living conditions of people in the areas where the Foundation operates.The work focuses on prevention, health education and the building of the infrastructures that ensure hygienic conditions.

Currently, the health care network of the Vicente Ferrer Foundation covers more than two and a half million people in Anantapur (Andhra Pradesh).

• Our projects
• Objectives
• Results

OUR PROJECTS

Prevention and health education

For peasants in Anantapur (Andhra Pradesh), one factor that foments the worsening of many diseases is the impossibility of missing a day's work and losing the wages it brings in. Additionally, many of them can not even afford to pay a doctor.

This situation means that many rural patients do not visit a doctor until the symptoms are very obvious. Foundation hospitals receive and handle such cases. This means many lives saved, but it is still not enough and must be supplemented by intense preventive work and health education in the villages and hamlets of the district.

Construction of Health-care infrastructure

The Foundation has built 20 rural clinics that allow patients to receive basic medical treatment without the need to travel. More serious cases are handled in hospitals that serve as reference health centers: three general hospitals, a family planning clinic, one for the care and support of people with HIV / AIDS and a Pediatric Hospital.

Wells and water pipes are also built and maintained to provide access to safe drinking water and reduce the risk of infections.

Training of health-care workers

Within the community health program, the Foundation has trained local health workers, known locally as midwives who, along with nurses and rural doctors, make up a very effective primary care network.

Furthermore, health volunteers extend their services throughout the rural area. Thanks to their knowledge and skills, there has been a remarkable improvement in health conditions, especially among pregnant women and in the treatment of minor illnesses.

The Bathalapalli School of Nursing (Anantapur) fills the high demand for qualified nurses within the five hospitals of the Foundation.

Nutrition program

The problems of malnutrition are tackled by the Foundation through a specific program.The objectives are the highest risk groups: children, pregnant women and the elderly.

Vaccination campaigns

Through health-care volunteers vaccination campaigns are carried out among infants to prevent diseases such as hepatitis, polio and tuberculosis.

OBJECTIVES

• Increase the number of rural clinics.
• Train and retain new medical professionals.
• Ensure that each village or hamlet has a midwife.