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| Widows Programe |
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In the cultural ethos of India, the widows have always suffered. There is no social, medical and financial cover for them and the condition of these women is deplorable. Consequently, their children suffer equally or more than their mothers.
Since the rural women are mostly uneducated and the financial cover usually exists only during the life of the husband, basic existence becomes difficult. Even if they have any share in the land, the land holdings are small and not enough to sustain them.
With little or no income after the death of the husband, and an added load of the children, it is nothing short of mental and physical trauma from which they are unable to recover for the rest of their lives.
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From our experience of more than 15 years, it has been observed that most of the widows are highly undernourished, have low haemoglobin counts, and emaciated. Their basic existence is dependent on the manual labor they put in during the harvesting season and a meagre widows' pension of Rs. 350 ($9) per month.
Many widows have died due to lack of money required for badly needed operations and could be saved if only they had a little medical cover. Had they lived, their children would not have become orphans.
It is with this background sthat Able is trying to give medical cover to the widows in the villages so that they can be saved from simple and avoidable diseases by approaching a good hospital where they have a right to avail the facilities for free.
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Able has implemented a medical cover for widows since 2006. The children of widows are also being looked after by Able in their respective villages. At present there are nearly 450 widows under medical cover with Able hospital and efforts are being made to increases the number to 1000 widows. To support 1000 widows and increase their number to 2000, there would be a need for philanthropic people to come forward to support this cause because every possible death of a widow creates orphans and a girl orphan is at tremendous risk of either getting in to a child marriage or being trafficked.
A simple project has been evolved in consultation with some insurance companies where-in each widow contributes 50 paise (a Penny) per day i.e. Rs. 180 ($4.00) per year and ABLE puts in Rs. 49 per day i.e. Rs 1400 ($40) annually which provides the widows a comprehensive medical cover up to Rs. 25,000 ($600), without any exclusion clause. The cover is sufficient to take care of their basic medical needs.
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