Rotary Club Acquires Grant To Bring Health Services To Underprivileged Communities

ALPHARETTA, GA -- The Rotary Club of Alpharetta recently joined forces with Rotary District 6900 and Rotarians for Family Health & AIDS Prevention (RFHA) to acquire a $99,455 grant to implement Rotary Family Health Days in India.

The Rotary Family Health Days program was first piloted in 2016 in Madhya Pradesh, India, and was a great success. With the knowledge gained from last year's session, Rotarians decided to put together a second session, scheduled for this year in the same city, and began work on securing the necessary funding.

According to RFHA's website, Family Health Days provides comprehensive, free health services to tens of thousands of people in "underprivileged communities."

The services include lifelong immunizations to children, such as polio and measles vaccines and comprehensive life-saving annual screens for conditions such as HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, diabetes, hypertension and more.

The grant will be used to educate and offer services and counseling to 51,000 citizens in Madhya Pradesh.

The grant will also go towards educating and training hundreds of Rotary volunteers, club member and citizens in Rotary District 3040 to organize and run the sites in partnership with the Directorate of National Health Mission of Madhya Pradesh and other entities.

In March, Alpharetta Rotary club president Jason Binder and member Bill Weeks will travel to Madhya Pradesh to join the volunteers there to participate and help in these efforts.

This project is also possible because of contributions from partners of the U.S. mission, the Indian Health Authority and private hospitals. This additional support is coming in the form of donated time from medical personnel, test kits, immunizations, some medicines, and in-kind contributions valued at $1.75 million.

"The Alpharetta Rotary Club is grateful to have the opportunity to participate in this Global Grant process and now to have been approved for the grant for Madhya Pradesh, India, in the amount of $99,455 is a miracle," Binder said. "We are proud to do our part in providing medical services to these citizens that would not have access to them otherwise.”

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