New Horizons
Mobile Dental Clinic
We are planning to set up a Mobile Dental Clinic to cover the urban slums and rural areas. The aim is to educate them on observing oral hygiene and alleviate pain and human suffering. The project also aims to catch early cancers in oral cavity to effectively save lives through a systematic follow up in the lower socio-economic sections of the society living in slums and a majority of the rural poor. In fact, the population living in slums account for approximately 40% of the population of Pune and expensive dental treatment is beyond their affordability. They deserve education on oral hygiene, as well as dental care. There are hardly any dental treatment facilities in a majority of the rural areas around Pune for obvious reasons. The availability of dental treatment facilities and their affordability to these sections of the society is an unheard cry in our country.

We have an ambulance and we propose to modify it as a mobile dental clinic and run the project for the first year as a pilot project. If it runs successfully, we need three more long chassis based mobile dental clinics to penetrate into the rural areas during the second year.

Economic Bracket or Niche Area
They consist of 40% of the population of Pune and since such facilities are not available in the rural areas, it is almost 100% wherever the Mobile Dental Clinic visits.

Our aim is to:

• firstly organize educating the masses on oral hygiene for prevention of cancers
• provide subsidized dental treatment to alleviate human suffering
• early detect oral cavity cancer and follow up deserving cases.

Palliative Care Centre
Existing Services
Care India Medical Society started SATSEVA in December 1994 to outreach the needy, advanced stage cancer patients in Pune city. It was a pioneering effort in palliative care in providing “home care”. The services include pain management, symptom management, providing supportive care equipment and the much needed emotional and psychological support to the patients as well as their family members. SATSEVA has been providing these services completely free of cost.

The home care services of SATSEVA have become popular and have been receiving a great response from the public of Pune city.

Situations Requiring Admissions
Administering oral morphine along with other adjuvant drugs adequately controls Cancer pain. While administering oral morphine, there are some side effects which are required to be controlled by doctors during the first eight to ten days till such time the patient develops tolerance to the side effects of the drugs. During this period, our doctors have to visit the newly registered patients every day. Once a patient is stabilized and the dosage of drugs is established, the patient is visited two to three times a week. Our home care programs work on these principles of providing adequate pain management.

Although a majority of the families are trained, equipped with supportive care equipment and psychologically well prepared to cope with the changing situations during the last stages, there are still a few families who cannot manage some of the crisis situations and look for professional help. In such situations, admission of the patient is required to relieve the distress of the family and to make the patient more comfortable.

Proposal
In order to make the efforts and services of our doctors available to more number of patients and to meet some of the crisis management requirements, it is proposed to start a facility for admissions of newly registered patients and those requiring crisis care. The newly registered patients families would be trained during the ten days that the patient is staying in the facility. Patients would be discharged after 8 to 10 days except in cases where some complications arise. The cases would be followed up at home as per our home care program.

It is in this context that Care India Medical Society proposes to set up a center for palliative care for needy advanced stage cancer patients.

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