Empowering Women Through Health Education

Yesterday, the Institute of Social Sciences inaugurated its celebrations for the 19th Women's Political Empowerment Day. The venue for the 2-day celebrations is the International Youth Center. This year's theme is 'Panchayats, Women and Health for All'. I was invited to speak yesterday on a health topic of my choice.

There were two plenary sessions for 24th April. The other speaker for the plenary session I was participating in, was Dr Madhulika Banerjee from Delhi University. Dr Banerjee spoke about mainstreaming  AYUSH and revitalizing local health traditions. The speaker during the second plenary system was Dr Meeta Pattnaik, MD, Transtek Clinical System. She was supposed to speak on the role of telemedicine in rural diagnostic services.

The sessions were being attended by nearly 400 women who have been recently elected into the Grama Panchayats. They represented 19 states of India. Both AYUSH and telemedicine were important topic for them.

I usually speak on cancer  and other non-communicable diseases. I titled my presentation for yesterday 'Empowering Women for Early Detection of Cancer' and spoke on how women can be taught to detect breast and cervical cancer at the earliest. I briefed them about the simplest screening methods for the two most common cancers among Indian women. I also spoke about HPV vaccine for prevention of cervical cancer. Here are some pictures from the session.