Spotlight: Voluntary Health Services, India

In 1958, an eminent physician and scholar Dr. K. S. Sanjivi, influenced by the Gandhian philosophy “Unto the Last”, envisaged and made available health and medical services to the poorest of the poor through the establishment of the Voluntary Health Services in the Indian city of Chennai. The underlying ethos of VHS is that of prevention and cure of serious illness, fostering of the family as a unit for medical care, and facilitating active community participation in the provision of a continuum of health care, with special reference to disadvantaged groups.

Through its Tamil Nadu AIDS Initiative (TAI) project, VHS has worked extensively over the past decades on defending and protecting the rights and well-being of communities of men who have sex with men, transgender people, Kothis and sex workers.

VHS is currently one of the national sub-recipients of the Multi-Country South Asia Global Fund HIV Programme, in which APCOM acts as the regional sub-recipient. Under the Programme, VHS aims to continue and improve its effort in providing HIV responses and to sensitise government and key stakeholders, law enforcement agencies and judicial members on issues relating to MSM and transgender population. Also within the Programme, VHS has participated in separate training on resource mobilisation, monitoring and evaluation, programme management and effective leadership provided by APCOM.

To learn more about the organisation, visit http://vhschennai.org/