In what might prove to be a model that can benefit community health clinics across India, GE Healthcare and a group of its Asian American employees have adopted the Banavaram Primary Health Center in India’s Tamil Nadu state, which is located in the southernmost part of the Indian peninsula. The project provides a unique intersection of GE’s new healthymagination business strategy, an employee-driven initiative, and a new government-private sector partnership — all with the goal of providing more access to critical medical technologies.In what might prove to be a model that can benefit community health clinics across India, GE Healthcare and a group of its Asian American employees have adopted the Banavaram Primary Health Center in India’s Tamil Nadu state, which is located in the southernmost part of the Indian peninsula. The project provides a unique intersection of GE’s new healthymagination business strategy, an employee-driven initiative, and a new government-private sector partnership — all with the goal of providing more access to critical medical technologies.
A beautiful friendship: The donation to the Banavaram Primary Health Center, above, supports GE’s healthymagination initiative, the goal of which is to make quality healthcare accessible and affordable everywhere in the world, particularly in underserved markets in developing regions.
GE Healthcare and GE’s company-wide Asian-Pacific American Forum are contributing $90,000 for a two-year program at the health center that will include creating a medical-technology infrastructure at the clinic and training its employees in its use. At the end of the two-year program, all equipment will be donated to the center.
V Raja, President and CEO of GE Healthcare South Asia, told The Financial Press: “This is a unique model where we can bring in quality healthcare at an affordable cost to those in the villages.” Based on the success of the pilot project, it may be expanded, he said. “We are in talks with a number or state governments to do the same,” he told the paper, citing the benefits of a “public private partnership model” in which private parties and volunteer groups bear the equipment costs while the state pays for upgrading facilities.
Worth the wait: More than 23,000 Primary Health Centers across India form the cornerstone of affordable rural healthcare. The waiting hall at the Banavaram clinic is pictured above.
The equipment GE is installing includes a fetal monitor, vital sign monitor, baby warmer, baby phototherapy system, a portable electrocardiogram, a portable ultrasound, needle destroyers, oxygen cylinders, suction apparatus and inverters for power supply.
Head start: “We’re confident that we will be able to build a ‘grassroots’ model that will yield far reaching benefits for years to come,” said Gaurav Agarwal, who leads GE’s Asian-Pacific American Forum for GE Healthcare.
The Banavaram center originally had a capacity of only two beds, a blood bank, an ultrasound machine, an anesthesia system and an ambulance. Today it is equipped with an operating theater and 30 beds for in-patient treatment, but still relies on outdated ultrasound and anesthesia equipment. It treats nearly 300 pregnant women per month for outpatient prenatal care and postnatal care and also handles approximately 50 caesarian deliveries in a month. The nearest large hospital is about 30 miles away.
* Read the announcement
* Read the story in The Hindu
* Read the story in The Hindu Business Line
* Read about GE’s donation of neonatal equipment in the U.K.
* Read GE Reports’ coverage of the healthymagination launch
* Read GE Reports’ story about our Health Advisory Board
* Read about healthymagination’s work with electronic medical records
* Read about our healthymagination work in Bangladesh
* Learn more about the partnership with Grameen Healthcare Trust
* Learn about our work in Cambodia
* Read our story about GE’s localized healthcare technology breakthroughs going global
* Learn more about CNBC’s roundtable discussion of “The Future of Health Care” in the U.S., which airs July 27th at 9 p.m. and 1 a.m.
