Kanha Outreach Project

Kanha Outreach Project

In September 2022 the community health team had a chance to facilitate a health project among the Baiga Adivasi Tribal community that lives at the Kanha Tiger Reserve. These tribes have survived for hundreds of years in the jungle, using the forest for all their needs, are excellent tiger trackers, have knowledge of medicinal trees and plants, can easily spot and differentiate various snake species among many things. There is much to learn from them while we provide access to modern health care to them. We as an institution hope to bring about a positive change in these remote tribal communities while trying to understand and preserve beneficial practices that has helped them to survive and thrive for hundreds of years.

The project hopes to empower our tribal populations enough to take control of their health and make well informed decisions. The project aims to highlight their health problems and to sensitize the general community towards their issues. One of the major challenges in the tribal remote areas is the lack of good quality public health data. Under this project periodic medical camps are conducted around the Kanha Tiger reserve. More than 800 people have benefitted through this camp in 2022. Simple surgical procedures were also done. We hope to be able to gather qualitative as well as quantitative data through this project which will help us to understand this population better and advocate for their health needs with them.

This project is done in collaboration with the Tiger Center, Mandla.