Indian Initiative for Management of Antimicrobial Resistance (IIMAR)

‘Spreading Hygiene through Flying Kites’

Indian Initiative for Management of Antibiotic Resistance (IIMAR) is a participant in the Indo-Swedish project ‘APRIAM’ being implemented at the R.D. Gardi Medical College, Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, India. The full title of the APRIAM project is “Antibiotic stewardship program including infection prevention and control and waste water treatment: Implementation research in hospital and community in India.” 

 

Hygiene team of Project APRIAM is working with a slogan- “Swachch Bharat - Swasth Bharat” (Clean India- Healthy India). The Campaign is being run since 2010 at R. D. Gardi Medical College, Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, India in collaboration with Karolinska Insitutet, Stockholm, Sweden.  The aim is to achieve the goal of Healthy India by keeping India clean. The team is led by Dr. Megha Sharma, Assistant Professor, Department of Pharmacology, R. D. Gardi Medical College, Ujjain.  It has been organizing activities both at hospitals and at community level in the Ujjain district of Madhya Pradesh. The long term aim is to conduct similar activities within various Indian states.

For advancing the message of “Swachch Bharat - Swasth Bharat” further, the team came up with an idea to spread awareness of the message to maintain hygiene through flying Kites. On the auspicious

occasion of Makar Sankrati (14 January 2015); the District collector, Ujjain organized a Kite festival at Dashehara maidan in Ujjain. The APRIAM team planned to take advantage of the opportunity to spread the message of "Be safe- Stay clean" with-in the campaign “Swachch Bharat - Swasth Bharat” among the visitors to the function. The APRIAM Hygiene team set-up 5 information desks at the function place, where over 1500 residents between ages 3 to 83 years visited. The team took advantage of these visits to educate and remind them to maintain self hygiene and general cleanliness and encouraged them to fill in a "Cross word puzzle" and participate in "Check your knowledge on hygeine" contest. Posters with messages of 'How and When to wash hands?',

were displayed at the site. Kites printed with message

 “Swachch Bharat - Swasth Bharat” in Hindi were distributed to 540 participants. Over 1000 residents participated in the other activities.

All entries were checked for their correctness level and all correctly filled entries were sorted out. The prize winners were selected through lottery system two times for each activity and prizes were distributed during the function. The team members Mr. Amit Pawar, Mr. Jeetendra Jat, Dr. Pintoo Marmat, Dr. Kamal Kishore Parmar, Ms. Sunita Parmar, Mr. Abdul Shadab, Ms. Pooja Bhati, Ms. Deepmala Lalavat and Mr. Lakhan Elunia contributed towards  the success of the event.

Contributed by: Dr. Megha Sharma & Dr. A.J. Tamhankar