Continuing to do our services in promoting healthcare for children, women and breadwinners, our major focus area for 2023-24 our key initiatives undertaken from October 2023 to December 2023 are listed: –

Healthcare

1. Set up of a Breast-milk Bank at Kasturba Hospital

Pre-mature babies are born weak and need their mother’s milk for survival. Formula milk and other artificially made milk powders cause more harm to these infants and hence cannot be given to them. Many times, the mothers produce less or no milk due to various reasons which is insufficient for the baby. Currently, there is only one milk bank at Lady Goschen hospital, Mangalore.

This gave rise to the idea of setting up a beast milk bank at Kasturba Hospital, Manipal. Manipal Foundation has supported procuring the equipment which would help to pasteurize and store the expressed milk donated by mothers who produce excess milk and administer it to those premature infants whose mothers produce less or no milk.
Manipal Academy of Higher Education will be supporting the operational expenditure of the Milk Bank. This facility will shortly be open to the people.

2. Cancer Screening Camps for Women

Working women belonging to the lower economic segment do not get their annual health checkups done as an entire day is spent at the medical center. They consider a day’s salary more important and do not want to lose the same. Many of them are not aware if they are affected by cancer and rush to the doctors only when they start showing symptoms. This is the time generally when the cancer is in the final stages.

Manipal Foundation, along with the Community Medicine Department of Manipal Academy of Higher Education and Gynecology Department of Kasturba Hospital have launched a unique program – “BREAST AND CERVICAL CANCER SCREENING” to screen 2,000 women in the age group 30 – 60 years through community and in-hospital programs. The costs of confirmatory tests and screening is being supported by Manipal Foundation.

We hope to catch this disease at the early stages so that the ladies can undergo treatments and procedures before it spreads with the help, expertise and guidance of Dr Ranjitha of the Community Medicine department of MAHE and Dr Shyamala of the Gynecology department of Kasturba Hospital.

3. PCOS Awareness Camp for the girl students in Udupi District

As it is commonly known, Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) is nowadays seen in young female adults and even school going girl children, but they are unaware of the symptoms and fail to observe the havoc it creates in their physiology.

Manipal Foundation, in partnership with Manipal Academy of Higher Education conducted an awareness program on this topic and close to 2500 girl students of which 800 students attended the program in person and 1700 students watched the program LIVE using the Edugyaan platform which is used for our Virtual Classroom Learning Program. These students understood what PCOS is, its symptoms and methods is how to manage this through yoga and balanced diet.

Each student filled in a form which was analyzed by the Endocrinologist Dr Sahana Shetty and her team at Kasturba Hospital among which 50 girls who were suspected to have the symptoms of PCOS will now be called and will be guided on how to manage this condition by consuming the right nutrition coupled with appropriate yoga practices. They will be checked for other conditions like obesity, diabetes etc. and will be constantly monitored over a 2 – 3 year period on their progress due to these interventions which are funded by Manipal Foundation.

Students who attended the session face-to-face

Students who attended the session remotely

Dr. Sahana Shetty

4. Chandra Prakash Sahu, a boy aged 9 years hailing from Jamshedpur, is suffering from Hemophilia, an inherited condition in which the blood does not clot properly due to lack of clotting factors. This often leads to spontaneous bleeding, as well as bleeding following injuries or surgeries. The only way to manage this ailment is by providing factors VIII to the patient every month for his entire lifetime as per the advice of the consulting doctor.

Manipal Foundation has collected funds which would provide three vials. The patient was then registered in the portal of the manufacturer of this medicine which helped him to get two vials free for every vial purchased. This resulted in a discount of 66% and gave a huge respite to the child’s father who practically replenished his entire savings to treat his son since birth.

5. Other Initiatives:

a) In the quarter October-November-December 2023, 116 patients have been treated and part of their treatment cost has been funded at various Manipal Hospitals, who have also practically offered their services at cost.

Education

100 bench-desk sets were provided to a Government Polytechnic College at Joida, Karnataka. Through this around 300 students are benefitted.
The audio-video experience of our Scholar Program students was enhanced by providing an interactive intelligent display panel (digital board). The teachers now have the benefit of accessing the internet and showing the students content in the form of animation, videos etc. effortlessly. Students enjoy the visual experience thereby understanding and retaining the concepts easily.

The Government School, Kogilu is located about 8 kms from the Bangalore campus of Manipal Academy of Higher Education. The strength of the schools is 180 (the number of girls being 82 and boys 95). The school’s infrastructure consisted of only one toilet each for the girls and boys. The students often avoided drinking water for the fear to use the toilet. Such was the sad condition in this school. After visiting this school and seeing this situation, Manipal Foundation has funded to repair the existing washrooms and build additional ones after consulting the school authorities and getting commitments from them that these toilets will be maintained in a clean and hygienic manner for the students.
This school also had a security issue, outsiders could enter the school during the nights and mess the classrooms as the compound walls were completely damaged. To solve this problem a wall has been constructed upto a height of 3 feet in the corridors of the building structures and grills have been fixed upto the ceilings so that the access to the outsiders is completely cut off, thus ensuring security.
ISHA Vidhya School at Salem has been funded by Manipal Foundation to set up the Digital Classroom, Computer Lab, providing furniture, procuring school-bus spares, installing drinking water equipment, purchasing electrical equipment like ceiling fans for the classrooms, solar streetlights for the school, wired microphones etc.

Other Social Impact Projects

BRAHMASHREE MITTURU PUROHITHA THIMMAYYA BHATTA SAMPRATHISTANA (R) (BMPTBS) is a 30-year-old organisation at Puttur, Karnataka and over a span of this time their activities have grown and now include: –

Providing support for education to students irrespective of caste, sex, or religion.
Publishing books on Aayush Health and Yoga for the benefit of the people.
Their Healthcare programs include conducting Blood Donation Camps, Free Health check-up camps.
For the farmers’ community, they conduct important lectures on agriculture and keep them informed on the latest technology available in the agri sector.
In the Social Space, they distribute free books and food to orphanages.

They are now building a facility which will benefit many more people of the community s like conducting health check camps in a larger scale, summer activity camps for students to engage them effectively during vacations, women empowerment programs to enable them to earn additionally for their families etc.
Manipal Foundation is funding a part of the construction cost which would help many more people of the community to avail the benefits of the activities and programs which BMPTBS will be conducting.