General Duty Assistants Program
To enhance and coordinate remote Health Care Delivery
To enhance and coordinate remote Health Care Delivery
More about GDA
Assistant nurse-caregivers, who have completed the NSDC, General Duty Assistant GDA’s ,are trained to ensure that hygiene and nutrition are provided,along with ensuring patients are monitored and following prescriptions to patients in hospitals, clinics, and old age homes. They assist patients and elderly to take medicine in time, follow daily routines and help bed ridden elderly who are not able to live independently. They maintain a suitable environment for a patient’s recovery under the supervision of a medical team.
More About GDA Old Age Home Program
This is a story of how a hygiene challenge in urban old age homes became the precursor for rural nursing and elderly care. Many of the abandoned elderly in urban areas have lifestyle diseases, neurological and orthopaedic problems, affecting their ability to live independently. They require trained nurse-assistants who could take care of their nutrition, hygiene, monitoring, assist with treatment and coordinate with medical teams. GDA’s were placed in nonprofit old age homes with the elderly, in partnership with Elder spring, a Vijayvahini Charitable Foundation initiative.
The nurse-assistants made a significant impact in the livability of destitute, abandoned and bed-ridden elderly. Their hygiene and nutrition improved.With the threat of COVID-19 Pandemic in mid-march 2020,there was a requirement that the partner old age homes and nurse-assistants could be rapidly upskilled which was done remotely. With the opening of the lock-down in May 2020, nurse-assistants returned to their villages, after a period of isolation in Hyderabad. Dakshas has grappled with the challenge to provide everyday nursing care in rural areas.
With the opening of the lock-down in May 2020, the GDA program turned out to be a precursor to extending elderly health services to villages. Nurse-assistants returned to their villages, after a period of isolation in Hyderabad. Their learnings could be deployed in the village, within their own communities. Nurse-assistants are happy to serve elderly in their villages rather than live as urban migrants.
