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She hand-held pregnant women out of their misery

"In my heydays, I was posted in Sion hospital as a resident doctor. I have witnessed the misery of pregnant women in city hospitals. Many come from rural areas. That's when I decided to directly intervene in villages," said Hegde, who barely sleeps five hours a day.

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Dr Aparna Hegde (centre) with her team members
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If there was one doctor that maintains balance between working in urban and rural areas, it is Dr Aparna Hegde. In her late 30s, Hegde wears many hats. She juggles between her medical practice in Gurgaon and has gone on to pioneer impactful rural health projects in Maharashtra since 2011.

"In my heydays, I was posted in Sion hospital as a resident doctor. I have witnessed the misery of pregnant women in city hospitals. Many come from rural areas. That's when I decided to directly intervene in villages," said Hegde, who barely sleeps five hours a day.

A urogynaecologist, she conducts pathbreaking research on damage sustained by a woman's pelvic bone during childbirth. But she did not want to restrict herself to medical practice, so she started community intervention in maternal and child health care for rural districts of Osmanabad, Washim and Solapur in Maharashtra.

Hegde's non-profit Armman has trained up to 250 women health workers in the three districts to visit pregnant women and hand-hold them through the process of childbirth. "The health workers are equipped with a tablet that has animation videos in local languages, such as Marathi, which helps the expectant mother learn by listening and seeing visuals. The health worker also tests the patient's haemoglobin and blood pressure as well as other vital parameters, apart from counselling," she said. As many as 1,032 health workers are being trained in Raigad for the initiative.

Hegde said 70% of women in Maharashtra are anaemic and 45% children between the ages of 0 and 5 are malnourished. In such a scenario, based on the success of these interventions, Armman is now tying up with the state government in Nandurbar to start training up to 50 auxilliary nurses and midwives (ANMs). "This is for the first time that we are tying up with the government, based on tested models of home-based care and animation-based counselling," she said.

ANMs have to travel long distances, at times walking up to three hours, from their remote villages to primary or district health centres, to feed in maternal and child care data. "We are equipping them with a mobile phone application, which will help them remotely update data without having to travel. Also, if patients do not go for timely treatment, the hospital will send an SMS to the ANM, asking for her intervention to send the pregnant woman to the hospital," said Hegde.

"Young doctors enter the profession with starry eyes, but later get disillusioned by witnessing apathy all around due to poor medical infrastructure. A few years back, I had an epiphany of sorts — a realisation of how I could help mothers and hand-hold them through their pregnancies. I did not then wait for someone else to take up the initiative. I dived into implementing the idea that could change thousands of lives."

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