Ronnie and Zarina Screwvala’s Swades Foundation announced strategic partnership with the Public Health Department, government of Maharashtra to further develop and implement interventions in crucial areas of healthcare such as nutrition, eye care, children with special needs and congenital heart disease etc. in Raigad district.

Swades will collaborate and work extensively with Public Health Department for the benefit of the community in six blocks namely Mhasla, Tala, Poladpur, Shrivardhan, Mangaon and Mahad and may consider extending the association to other blocks in the state.

The MoU will help Swades strengthen their ongoing efforts in the region across 2,000 villages to provide preventive and promotive health services to a population of 4,71,000. Swades has 1,059 community health women volunteers known as SwaRaksha Mitras and provides mobile vision care with three state of the art mobile vans to screen over 1.4 lakh villagers with refractive errors. They have provided over 26,000 high quality spectacles and conducted 4400 free cataract surgeries. With a focus on anaemia and malnutrition, Swades has tied up with Anganwadis to detect children suffering from it and help them with complementary nutrition. Other measures also involve screening and management of children with heart diseases who are provided treatment at Fortis Hospital, Mulund and the Anaemia Control Project in collaboration with the THO, BEO and CDPO of Raigad that has previously screened 14,000 children.

Swades aims to bring down anameia numbers by 50% in children and adolescents in age group 1 to 16 years through Anganwadis and Zilla Parishad Schools of Mangaon and Mahad blocks of Raigad within a year under the Anameia Control Program. Through this, they aim to treat 71,906 children through various initiatives. Through the strategic partnership with the Public Health Department, Swades will ensure all children receive Deworming tablets; deliver Iron Syrup to anaemic children in the 1-6 years age group and share IFA tablets to anaemic children from 1st to 10th standard. The stock of medicines will be provided by the government to Anganwadis and schools in the district on a monthly basis. Swades will spread the word of Anaemia Control initiatives through the SwaRaksha Mitras and Nodel teachers to mobilize families.

Under this MoU, the Public Health Department will provide technical support for production of IEC material for Maternal Child Health and Nutrition programs, facilitate training and capacity building of Swades health facilitators and community volunteers to deliver services, facilitate periodic meeting for exchange of information and update on progress, provide and share relevant data of the region, adopt community health women volunteers as ASHA workers wherever there is a shortfall among others.

Speaking about the partnership, Sujata Saunik, Principal Secretary – Public Health Department said, “The Public Health Department is very happy with this partnership because this will take us to the last mile collectively and we hope to sign many more of such partnerships in the future and we are looking forward to working with Swades Foundation.”

Ronnie and Zarina Screwvala added in a joint statement, "We share a common goal with the government of Maharashtra and this partnership will help us achieve our objectives of alleviating the health and nutrition indicators of the district through highly focused initiatives.”