Health & Family Welfare

Malnutrition limits the capacity to learn by drastically affecting the motor, sensory, cognitive, social and emotional development of children. And given the low levels of public expenditure on health and large presence of the private sector in healthcare, non-governmental healthcare providers can help meet public health challenges.

JND Charitable Trust will be a community worker linking households to health facilities. Western countries have fought public health challenges by improving sanitation and making clean drinking water available to its people. These are directly relevant to our quest for better health for our people.

India also has a large private sector in healthcare and its involvement through health insurance instruments holds the key to meeting our healthcare challenges.

There is also an urgent need to tackle anaemia, which is the single most common nutritional deficiency affecting work capacity, learning abilities of children, and morbidity. In India, it is a universal problem, affecting 50 per cent of the entire population and 90 per cent of the poor.

JND Charitable Trust plans to tackle anaemia through affordable and effective health intervention, which could substantially improve the health status of the population.

India has a comparative advantage in the manufacture of generic drugs, but these need to be taken to rural areas at affordable prices in order to ensure that poor families do not incur large out-of-pocket expenses for procurement of medicines. JND Charitable Trust  has made plans to tie-up with distributors of such medicines so that they can reach the poor. 

Given the vastness of the country in terms of both its size and population, the government is not able to provide the entire range of requisite public health services; there is thus space for private healthcare providers too. And this is where non-governmental organisations like JND Charitable Trust will step in and fill the gap.

Food supplementation programmes help the government in tackling issues of hunger and food security, as well as social equity. Without food supplementation, counselling and other support measures lack the credibility and effectiveness for addressing malnutrition. Special population groups, like pregnant women and nursing mothers, children below the age of five years, school children and adolescent girls, need to be targeted by non-governmental organisations and in this manner JND Charitable Trust plans to help the government reach its objectives.