There are areas which are isolated and children there need our help: Dr Batra

Dr Batra said, “the fact that this is very impactful work, in the sense that we have really been able to prevent a 100,000 children from going blind, that impact is what has helped us get the recognition.”

Dr Radhika Batra is one of the four winners of the 2022 Goalkeepers Global Goals award given by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation last week. Dr Batra co-founded Every Infant Matters, a non-profit working to improve nutritional delivery to disadvantaged groups, particularly women and children. By partnering with community leaders, clinics and local organizations, Every Infant Matters works in countries such as Kenya, Nigeria, the Philippines, and the Dominican Republic, besides India. Dr Batra spoke with HT on winning the award. Edited excerpts:

Dr Radhika Batra co-founded Every Infant Matters, a non-profit working to improve nutritional delivery to disadvantaged groups. (HT Photo)

How important is this recognition at this stage of your work?

We are at a new inflection point at the organization. We want to scale up the work, introduce new projects, reach more areas within the country and abroad as well. So, at this stage, getting this huge recognition means a lot as it would garner the attention of stakeholders and donors, and help us achieve all these new milestones.

Could you explain the work you do?

We run an organization called Every Infant Matters that aims at bridging the gaps in health care and fighting for ubiquitous access to health care for all. We are focused on eradication of malnutrition and its devastating consequences in India. We have projects in Africa that’s Kenya and Nigeria, and in the Philippines and Dominican Republic as well. Also, we provide malnourished children vitamin A to prevent them from going blind. Normally, we get the essential vitamin from our diet, but these are children who don’t have access to nutritious food.

What helped you clinch this award?

The fact that this is very impactful work, in the sense that we have really been able to prevent a 100,000 children from going blind, that impact is what has helped us get the recognition. Secondly, we have spent a lot of our energy on Covid relief in the past two years and we helped the country in times of humanitarian crisis, in times of global crisis that the world had never seen before, and we even had Covid relief projects in Kenya and Dominican Republic, and Nigeria, which is what I think helped us get the award.

Malnutrition in India has been a major public health concern. What are the gaps that India needs to fill?

The Indian government has of course very good projects to tackle malnutrition, but last mile delivery is still a problem. There are areas which are isolated by geography or by social and cultural barriers such as people who live in tribal areas that are completely isolated from the outside world. Their children need our help. We need to reach those communities. What we do at Every Infant Matters is that we train and hire community health workers from within the community, so when the message of health and solutions come from a person who belongs to the community and culture, who speaks the same language, they are a lot more well accepted than when they come from people who are outsiders and not from the same sociocultural background.

What are the areas you would like to focus on in the future?

We want to scale up our work in several other parts of the country, and reach a few more other countries that are conflict-ridden and where children are extremely malnourished. We also have a few more exciting projects that we are going to introduce, which deal with tackling problems in the space of maternal and child health. In more holistic way, we are going to use technology as an enabler and for a lot more things.