Helpyourbody, a Piramal Healthcare Campaign

The Piramal Group, a research and diagnostics firm based in Mumbai, is partnering with the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM), NGOs, and more than 25,000 doctors across India to create a new campaign called “helpyourbody.” As LiveMint reports, helpyourbody is a

crusade against chronic diseases, aiming to provide affordable medicines in rural areas.

The programme… will emphasize on imparting knowledge on healthy food for healthy body and target each and every individual.

Through the three phases of knowledge, action, and care (which is the Piramal tagline), the campaign will first work to partner with thousands of doctors, then make “helpyourbody” tests available and employ detection camps, and finally build communities and involve local NGOs.

Dr. Swati Piramal, Director of the Piramal Group, is quoted as explaining the dire need for this CSR initiative:

India is expected to be the chronic disease capital of the world with 70 million diabetics, 213 million hypertensive patients and 60 million suffering from arthritis by 2025. According to the WHO, the cost of chronic diseases, including welfare losses, is estimated to be Rs 15,01,200 crore by 2015.

With those those numbers providing motiviation, the campaign, according to the helpyourbody website, aims to minimize “economic loss by 2% every year and [earn]  the nation Rs. 67,500 crores by 2015,” as well as save about 1 million human lives.

TC-I Tidbits

Your daily dose of headlines:

• Health: Over 53% children in India under five years – that is, 67 million – live without basic healthcare facilities. This means that India alone accounts for about one-third of all children in the world aged below five who don’t have basic healthcare. [Source: Times of India]
• Education: There is a shortage of teachers at central universities, with 20 per cent of teaching posts being vacant since October. The government will raise the age for pension schemes, and a committee will review the pay scale to address the issue.
• Energy: With low-interest loans for solar power from Canara Bank and Syndicate Bank, more than 100,000 people in rural Karnataka benefit from affordable and reliable electricity. The program was subsidized by the United Nations Environment Programme.

Midday Newsfeed

• BoP Energy and beyond: BP has built a new stove for the BoP market that produces much fewer emissions than the typical wood burning stoves. Scaling up, the government predicts that by 2017, 10% of total transport fuel will come from biofuels. In order to improve public transportation in Hyderbad and the surrounding area, the World Bank has decided to fund a new bus rapid transit system.
• Microfinance: Growth of microfinance has been shown to be fastest in the Eastern part of the country while it has the strongest presence in the South. We wrote about it already here, but ACCESS’ partnership with Hindustan Unilever to provide potable water has been picked up by Microcapital.org.
• Education 2.0: Shital spoke before on the use of technology to democratize education. Now the CEO of Digital Media Convergence Ltd has said that education will be the driving force behind the adoption of IPTV.
• Healthcare: Despite efforts by government to help communities defray the cost of healthcare, most people still find themselves fronting the costs of such procedures and tests. The central government has amended the law regarding organs transplanted from cadavers.
  
• Culture: A small, indigenous group in Maharashtra continues to fight to preserve their mother tongue and heritage. In another story, one of the poorest communities in Assam has taken to international standards to help them emerge from poverty.
  

Piramal Prize — Help Democratize Healthcare

Anand Shah, the founder of Indicorps, along with the Ajay G. Piramal Foundation has established the  Piramal Prize whose goal is to

encourage and support bold entrepreneurial ideas which have a profound impact on access to higher standards of health for India’s rural and marginalized urban communities. The award recognizes high-impact, scalable business models that propose innovative solutions which directly or indirectly address India’s healthcare crisis. Entries may include, but are not limited to, innovations in service delivery, technology applications, health-related products, or mechanisms to address public health necessities such as potable water.

Initial steps for entry can be found here.

HealthCareMagic plans to be new portal for Indians

Startup Dunia writes that the website HealthcareMagic has been launched with the aim of becoming the primary portal for Indians’ healthcare needs. Utilizing the internet to make access more widely available, the website plans to offer the following features.

• Chat live with a doctor for free using the portal (between 9 AM – 9 PM IST)
• Rate, review doctors, hospitals. Share your experiences
• Search and compare doctors and health care service providers in Bangalore
• They also have health / hospitalization calculators to aid you in making healthcare related decisions

Currently in beta and only servicing Bangalore, the company hopes to expand to other areas of the country soon.