BIRDS (Brothers Integrated Rural Development Society) - Heal (Society for Health, Education, Action for Liberation) is an off-shoot of BIRDS, Bangalore. BIRDS-HEAL, is under the legal-custodianship of ‘The Sacred Heart Brothers Society’ – a registered non-profit social organisation committed towards ameliorating the miseries of the poor in Karnataka. Since the year 2001, BIRDS-HEAL is working among the poorest of the poor in 146 remote villages of Jewargi taluk, 36 villages of Hapur taluk in Gulbarga District. The aim of the organisation in Gulbarga is to promote participatory socio-economic development process among the poor and mitigate their misery. One of the major thrust areas of BIRDS-HEAL in Gulbarga is ‘community-based preventive and curative health’.
BIRDS runs a holistic programme addressing health and development needs. Mobile clinics thrice a week cater to the medical needs of the villagers. People, who are at high-risk, are counselled and taken to the VCTC for testing. Follow up care is provided for PLHAs. It also networks with the Taluka hospital doctors to address the needs of PLHAs.
BIRDS also runs a residential school -‘Berny Special School’- for underprivileged, socially backward children, most of whom are children of devadasis and construction workers, street children and bonded children. The school has 152 children among whom 9 children are HIV infected and 17children are HIV affected.
With the initiation of Samastha project, the centre has developed its infrastructure into 25-bedded facility to render IP services to PLHAs. There are three Self Help Groups formed for the PLHAs. Support groups are encouraged and facilitated. |
