The pandemic has shaken the Indian healthcare system and revealed underlying challenges in terms of accessibility, social equity, safety and wellbeing of millions across the country.

The Bitter Pill is part of a podcast series to highlight discrimination and gender equality issues with regard to healthcare access in India, not only emergency care, not only during a pandemic but lifelong healthcare, primary facilities, infant and maternal support and menstrual hygiene access.

The panellists on this episode, Monalisa Padhee, Head of Women’s Wellness at Barefoot College International and Shruthi Iyer, CEO, Foundation of Mother and Child Health will share their institutions’ simple solutions to primary healthcare crises, which can be easily replicated around the world especially through the use of on-ground, grassroots training, simple tech-based solutions and by involving the community, ie. the direct beneficiaries.

Giving up is not an option for these non-governmental frontline workers, even though challenges continue to mount. With limited resources and problems of accessibility, social equity and safety, these organizations break through the incompetency and apathy of an overburdened public healthcare system and bring relief where most needed.

CREDITS
Clearing The Haze –Making The Invisible Visible is a woman gaze series of podcasts on gender, equality, generation, and related issues produced by Shachi Irde on the occasion of the Generation Equality Forum and supported by the Embassy of France in India, the Institut Français in India and the Alliance Française in India.

Directed by: Shachi Irde | Technical support by: Hemant Soreng
Proposed by: French Institute In India, Jaipur

Podcast Summary: The Bitter Pill

Host: Shachi Irde

00:00: Introduction

01:37: About Monalisa and Shruthi and their work.

05:14: Shruthi – How did you get interested in the first thousand days of a child?

07:03: Monalisa – what has been your experience?

13:48: How have you coped with the challenges this pandemic has thrown?

16:50: Shruthi – please share some simple, impactful solutions that you have come up with.

20:00: Please share some stories of how you have changed somebody’s life.

24:34: What is the one thing that frustrates you?

31:09: Would you like to share any message for our listeners?

33:49: Conclusion. Outro.