About The Voluntary Health Services (VHS), Chennai

Dr K S Sanjivi an eminent physician and scholar greatly influenced by Gandhian thought and particularly by the philosophy of “unto the last”, envisaged and made available health and medical services to the “have-nots” by establishing the Voluntary Health Services (VHS) in 1958.

Today VHS stands as a multi speciality 405 bedded tertiary teaching hospital offering modern medical care to the poor and lower sections of society.  The hospital offers all general specialties, a few super specialties, blood bank, haemophilia center and a de-addiction programme.

The VHS family health insurance scheme with a nominal subscription provides for a comprehensive continuum of health care services to the lower sections of the society irrespective of their ability to pay for services and almost 60% of all services are provided free of cost.

VHS Institute of Community Health

Apart from tertiary clinical care, Community Health outreach is the core of the VHS vision for health care of the rural underprivileged.  The Mini Health Centers, a forerunner of the now Primary Health Centers, offers a gamut of health care as well as implementing community based interventions. Presently the 14 Mini Health Centers (MHC) are located in the southern periphery of Chennai and caters to predominantly peri-urban areas as also to a smaller urban slum population.

The MHCs are situated in two blocks and are all centrally located in the communities that they serve.  VHS outreach has been in place for the past 30 years and was initially based on a focus on TB control and then later developed a more inclusive and comprehensive primary health programme.

Each of the MHC functions equivalent to the concept of a Government sub center and these centers serve as a nodal point of outreach into the target communities by Government health schemes such as immunization and DOTS etc and are a recognized collaborating point for national health programmes. 

Each center caters to a population of 5,000-10,000 and is staffed by trained male and female multi purpose health workers, assisted by Lay First Aiders and is backed by regular Medical Officers visits.  The VHS hospital provides for in-patient and specialized care though its referral system. 

In the community health outreach, fundamental focus is at three levels of intervention- The first is by means of direct intervention at the grassroots through preventive, promotive, curative and rehabilitative healthcare outreach conducted by the 14 MHCs. The second level of intervention is by means of capacity building of health care workers by providing skills based training and thirdly by conducting epidemiological and social research.

The mini health centers provide Nutrition, Antenatal and Child health care services including immunization, school health, health education, supplementary feeding, environmental sanitation and basic curative services.

The Community Health programme of VHS and Mini Health Centers have been widely acclaimed by the ICMR, ICSSR, UNICEF, State and Central planning commissions, MOH&FW, USAID. The Voluntary Health Association of India awarded VHS the Father Tong Memorial award for the best community health organization in India.