Karuna Trust

Karuna Trust is a non-profit organization in India that provides equitable and integrated primary healthcare in remote and inaccessible districts of five states – Karnataka, Meghalaya, Odisha, Arunachal Pradesh, and Assam. Karuna Trust offers all aspects of COVID-19 care and management – testing, contract tracing, home-based management, and telemedicine – at their 71 primary care facilities. With this award, it is improving infrastructure at its facilities and developing an integrated IT solution, using artificial intelligence, to predict where COVID-19 outbreaks will happen in the future. The award contributes to the Foundation’s goal of improving access to resources for immediate COVID-19-related public health challenges while simultaneously advancing new models, policies, and infrastructure for greater public health equity and resilience in the future.

Primary healthcare has been most neglected area in public healthcare delivery system in India and poor quality of services results in unsatisfactory reproductive, maternal, and newborn health outcomes. With previous MacArthur support, Karuna Trust - a NGO based in Bangalore has partnered with seven state governments through a model of Public-Private-Partnership to enable 86 primary health centers (PHCs) operating in remote, rural areas to provide antenatal, delivery, and essential obstetric services. However, the quality of care still requires substantial improvement. The grant works with 60 PHCs in four states with high delivery caseloads to improve quality of care standards through provider training, strengthening management systems, and the application of mHealth and telemedicine solutions.

To scale up a public-private partnership model of delivering maternal and reproductive health services in India (over three years).