Sukanya Poddar

About Me

I am a social development sector professional, with expertise in child protection, health, nutrition, education, skilling, and empowerment of marginalized communities, particularly children, adolescents, young people, and women. Worked extensively with national, international, and corporate agencies, contributing to policy formulation, strategy development, capacity building, and implementation of large-scale social programs across major states of India.

I am passionate about healthy living and champions the cause of adolescent health, particularly sexual, reproductive health and rights of marginalised and vulnerable adolescents. I wish to generate donations for saving 1000 girls from cervical cancer through this marathon.

Appeal

Despite concerted efforts by the government, the poor immunization status of cervical cancer vaccine and the poor uptake seem to be unrelenting. A number of reasons have been identified and these include lack of awareness, communication gaps, target population not aware of requirement of vaccine and follow up doses, myths and misconceptions regarding vaccine among the underserved community, fear of adverse reactions following immunization, rumours, lack of faith in functionaries and so on. Efforts are negligible when it comes to promote the vaccine from government machineries. Therefore, there is an urgent need to understand why there is a persistent poor uptake of routine immunization interventions particularly in the underserved community amongst adolescents. CCDT proposes to develop innovative tools to address the problem, demonstrate model community mobilization program, build capacity of ASHA, Anganwadi and community mobilizers and increase the uptake of cervical cancer vaccine. The proposed intervention will address improving immunization seeking behaviour (less refusal for immunization), creating demand for cervical cancer vaccine by providing last mile connectivity through Community Mobilisers and Supervisors and liaising with the Health Machinery for creating an enabling environment. CCDT will take the health and education system along to drive the initiative.

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