Integrated Health

Health care is where Friends Foundation began. After the 2001 flood in Rawalpindi we ran free medical camps in the worst-hit streets, and those camps grew into primary healthcare centres in Akal Garh, Mohan Pura and Mohallah Raja Sultan that still serve these neighbourhoods on the edge of the city.

The centres concentrate on reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health, with a particular focus on nutrition for young children and for pregnant and breastfeeding women. Around 50,000 women, 50,000 children and 40,000 men are seen directly each year, and our health education sessions reach many more people in the surrounding communities.

Beyond Rawalpindi, our teams have run medical camps for families displaced to Kohat and Swat, and for flood-affected communities in Charsadda, Kohistan and Muzaffargarh. When acute watery diarrhoea broke out, we worked with WHO to run treatment centres at the district headquarters hospital in Muzaffargarh, at RHC Kohistan and in the Togh Sarai camp for displaced families in Hangu.

Under PAIMAN, the Pakistan Initiative for Mothers and Newborns, we trained traditional birth attendants, held mobile health camps, vaccinated pregnant women against tetanus, handed out clean delivery kits and built referral links in rural parts of Rawalpindi district. We have also worked with the GAVI Alliance and CRS on a low-cost model for raising immunisation coverage, and with APACHA and ActionAid on an HIV and AIDS awareness campaign that reached 300,000 people in Rawalpindi.