Putting Women First: Women and Health in a Rural Community
By: Rani Bang
with Sunanda Khorgade
and Rupa Chinai
Foreword by Rahul Goswami
demy octavo hb 312pp ISBN 978-81-90760-2-1 Rs 700 Nov 2010
Trained in India and at Johns Hopkins University where she
and her husband, Dr. Ajay Bang, learnt public health and research
methodologies, the couple returned to India to set up a health clinic in
Maharashtra’s neglected Gadchiroli district, about 170 km from Nagpur, where
the Gonds are the dominant tribal group. As co-author Rupa Chinai points out,
this settlement goes back to prehistory, ‘from here stretches eastwards the
crescent of the tribal population, the indigenous peoples of India’. Rani
Bang’s research found that 92 percent of women in this region had no access to
treatment for gynaecological disorders in the absence of women doctors. Such
neglect was exacerbated by ‘development’ since rural families were, and remain,
unprepared for the rapid changes wrought in the spheres of education,
information, material enhancement and changes in lifestyle, which impact on
relationships and health.
Rani Bang is a co-founder of the Society for
Education Action and Research in Community Health (SEARCH) that pioneers new
models in Indian health care; Rupa Chinai has specialized on
developmental journalism with a focus on health; Sunanda Khorgade works
with the women’s health programme at SEARCH and trains traditional birth attendants;
Rahul Goswami is a policy analyst and writer, based in Goa and Delhi.
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