Working Women's Forum

Working Women's Forum - India

Micro-insurance creates safety net for the poor

With an under 5 mortality rate of 98,
India ranks 49th in the world for children's health.
(UNICEF State of the World's Children 2001)

Semi-starved and anemic, suffering from backaches, headaches, and fatigue, India's women have little access to a formal health care system and little money to afford basic medical services. The innovative Working Women's Forum, a microcredit program initiated in 1978, has taken a stand against women being denied basic health care and created a safety net - micro-insurance.

Working Women's Forum (WWF) currently serves 230,000 poor women with loans to start their own businesses. Taking a bottom-up approach in its organizational efforts has been key to WWF's success as it continually innovates to provide services demanded by the poor.

WWF noted that many of its clients were semi-starved and anemic when entering the program, making them prone to various infections. In addition, homemakers in India are more apt to suffer from backaches, headaches, fatigue, stomach pain, and other non-serious ailments that are generally considered not serious enough to consult a doctor. While often it is the male member of the family who visits a health clinic, even for the smallest of ailments, the women are denied health care and suffer until they reach a critical level of ill health.

Because of this, Working Women's Forum focuses on women's and reproductive health care by selecting and training women cadres from poorer areas to go into their neighborhoods and teach other women basic health care skills. These trained women focus on health care issues for women from birth through the reproductive years and into old age. 960 trained "health cadres" operate in 720 urban slums and 340 villages and have reached approximately 1.6 million families. They also train other women in childcare skills, focusing on the welfare and development of female children, a group most often neglected by the formal health-care establishment.

WWF has also implemented a micro insurance scheme that offers social security to women workers. There are currently 118,000 policy holders in this program. In addition, in April of 2000, WWF launched a health-insurance package for self-employed women, a program that evolved from and is implemented by the women themselves. These women work in the informal sector and have no access to formal health benefits. WWF's package provides for hospital stays, doctors fees, medicines, and surgeries and costs between 70 and 210 rupees (approximately $1.50 to $4.50). Since its launch, 1557 women have enrolled.

By listening to the concerns of poor women, Working Women's Forum has created a safety net for the poor - allowing women to no longer live in fear.

Working Women's Forum
Dr. Jaya Arunachalam
55, Bhimasena Garden Road
Mylapore, Chennai 600 004 INDIA
Phone/Fax: 91 44 4992853
Email : wwforum@md2.vsnl.net.in

For more information on Working Women's Forum, click here. (PDF format)

Table of Contents: