Thalassemia is one of the most threatening health challenges faced by India. According to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, India has the largest number of children with Thalassemia Major in the world, about 1 to 1.5 lakh.
The only cure available for children with Thalassemia is bone marrow transplantation (BMT). However, BMT is difficult and not affordable by the parents of all the children who are affected. Hence repeated blood transfusions, followed by regular iron chelation therapy to remove the excessive iron overload, consequent to the multiple blood transfusions forms the mainstay of the treatment in India.
Public health is integral to RAF Global’s mandate of improving the quality of life in intervention countries across Asia and Africa. We adopt an integrated and multi-sectoral approach and work hand-in-hand with governments and a plethora of local partners to address some of India’s most challenging health issues. Preventing and addressing critical diseases at the lower strata of society constitutes one of our core outreach of health programme. RAF Global is playing a lead role in Thalassemia awareness and control in the districts of Junagadh and Porbandar in Gujarat. It has adopted a holistic approach comprising large-scale awareness and testing of thalassemia among college youth, mobilizing blood for patients, and further setting up Pediatric Thalassemia Wellness Centers in public hospitals. A 30-bed Centre has been established in the GMERS Hospital, Junagadh in collaboration with the Government of Gujarat. The state-of-the-art facility will administer adequate transfusion and therapies, and conduct wide-ranging counseling for thalassemic children along with their parents.
Discussions are in advanced stages to set up two more Centers in Porbandar (Gujarat) and Barmer (Rajasthan). The diagnostic infrastructure has been beefed up in Porbandar and Junagadh in collaboration with the Indian Red Cross Society. A concerted campaign has been designed to reach out to colleges and raise awareness about the disease, and further encourage students to undertake medical tests for identification of Thalassemia. A component of subsidy has been added by RAF Global to create incentive for the test among college going youth and this is pushing up the number of the tests, for the first time.
This comprehensive approach will not only aid in the prevention of birth of children affected with thalassemia, through well-planned screening programmes, information dissemination and awareness generation activities, but also administer adequate transfusion and therapy to those affected enabling them to lead a better life without a financial burden to their families.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is a vast country, roughly equivalent to the size of Western Europe having a population of 105,625,114, with an annual growth of 3.29 per cent in 2023. Chronic neglect and underfunding of public health infrastructure have severely hampered the country’s ability to respond to the healthcare needs of its burgeoning populace. The struggle for medical needs is enormous, with limited public access to even the most basic healthcare services in rural areas.
Healthcare services face significant resource and operational challenges of limited staffing, gross demand-supply mismatch, weak diagnostic methods and infrastructure, shortage of medical equipment, and poor application of technology along with the absence of critical infrastructure. The situation is further compounded by inadequately trained staff, lack of well-stocked pharmacies, and poor provisions as well as coverage of health insurance. Consequently, DRC is witnessing poor public health programme performance and outcomes alongside an increasing disease burden.
Public health and nutrition are integral to RAF Global’s larger mandate of improving the quality of life in its countries of intervention across Africa. We adopt an integrated and multi-sectoral approach and work hand-in-hand with governments and a plethora of local partners to address some of Africa’s most challenging health issues, with the understanding that complex health problems require integrated solutions.
Our programs strengthen the DRC’s fragile health system and are critical for sustaining improvements in service delivery at the national, provincial, and local levels. RAF Global supports the expansion of health systems in DRC by strengthening the public healthcare system and supporting government interventions, with a wide array of support. In the last couple of years, we have supported Commune level hospitals with critical infrastructure, lifesaving medical equipment, ophthalmology microscopes, radiant warmers, incubators, etc to upgrade RCH, MCH and eye care facilities. Such interventions have not only improved public health services in our intervention geographies in DRC but also registered visible growth in health outcomes.
RAF Global, with its commitment to strengthen district level public healthcare infrastructure in tier III towns has taken a landmark step with the setting up of a PSA Medical Oxygen Generation Plant of 960 LPM at GMERS General Hospital in Junagadh district in Gujarat. This initiative has its genesis in the humanitarian response of RAF Global during second wave of Covid 19 pandemic in India that stressed the district medical infrastructure across the country.
Built with the benevolent support of Zarina Foundation, the plant was inaugurated on March 17, 2022 by Mr. Rizwan Adatia (Founder & Chairman of RAF Global), Mr.Nadir Umedali Dhrolia (Chairman of Zarina Foundation) and a notable philanthropist from Gujarat, Mr. Umedali Hassam Dhrolia.
The plant would serve not only the patients from Junagadh district, but also patients from adjacent districts like Porbandar, Rajkot, Amreli, Gir-Somanth and Diu. He emphasized, with much praise and gratitude, that this has been the highest ever contribution by any organisation to the hospital.
Along with the installation, RAF Global has also taken the expenses of maintenance of the plant for next two years. The plant would bolster critical life-saving services of GMERS hospital for next 10 years. It would also improve access to effective medical treatment at the district level, for a large segment of local community.
In 2021, RAF Global in India provided grant to Bharat Sevashram Sangha (BSS), India for expanding its boarding & lodging facility for outstation cancer patients and their caregivers in Navi Mumbai. With the construction of a new building, the total lodging facility has been raised to 162 beds that will provide succour to many outstation poor patients who visit Mumbai every year from various parts of India for cancer treatment. The new block of flats was inaugurated by RAF Global’s Founder and Chairman, Mr. Rizwan Adatia on 9th October, 2021 and has been functional since then.
BSS runs several of these centres in Mumbai to ease the financial burden and mental stress of the outstation cancer patients and their families. These facilities have provided free accommodation, free transportation to the hospital, subsidised canteen facilities and counselling related services. RAF Global has financed these efforts for past several years.
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