International Women's Day 2018: Village SHGs take up cause of women's health

LUCKNOW/AMETHI: For years, self-help groups (SHGs) have been a village woman's friend in need. They have bailed out women from clutches of moneylenders and helped them find a voice in everyday house-hold decision-making.
The 'samooh', as SHGs are known in villages, has now started working for the well-being of women's health.

A visit to some SHGs in Amethi shows hope for samooh being the platform for preventive health care. Interaction with at least 10 'samooh sakhis', who lead the SHGs, suggests that their SHGs were serving as a platform for knowledge sharing on a variety of health issues including maternal and newborn care, besides crucial life-saving interventions like breastfeeding and kangaroo mother care.

Jyoti SHG in Naraini village for instance works to promote immunization, encourage pregnant women to go for mandatory health check-up and motivates women to exclusively breastfeed their babies. Likewise, Mahalakshmi group emphasises on spacing between children to keep their member's health.

Aarti SHG has included "saving for health" in their preamble while Vaibhav Samooh in Parsawa village says good nutrition is the key to a good future. Shiv Kripa and Lakshmi SHGs have made their members pledge health prevention to keep financial crises away.

The trend is being documented by social organisations. One such assessment group affiliated to Rajiv Gandhi Mahila Vikas Pariyojana (RGMVP) showed that health issues were discussed regularly by 70% of the groups with about 50% emphasising on prevention. Almost all of them lend money for health needs, particularly child birth.

"The SHG leaders became resource persons for other members and pass on knowledge on health seeking behaviours," said PS Mohanan, state program director for RGMVP.

Some of them have even developed ways to track pregnant women and children and follow up with them.

The SHGs are full of testimonies attesting to the benefits of their emphasis on health.