Accepted Panels

Tribes (Scheduled Tribes or STs) of India still mostly inhabit the far-flung and remote inaccessible rural areas of the country where the penetration of public health system needs much more improvement. This leads to lesser utilization of health services by more than 104 million strong yet diverse tribal population in the country, and, poorer health outcomes in these socio-economically underprivileged communities. The governments of the day have rolled out several programmes to ameliorate the situation over the past 75 years since independence. However, there still remains a significant gap in the overall development of the tribes. The present paper argues that the need of the hour is to reach the unreached tribal communities using health communication strategies so as to: (i) learn about the traditional tribal health practices which still remain very much elusive to the scientific fraternity (ii) impart health education using tailor-made and evidenced-backed health communication techniques, and (iii) improve the health services utilization pattern in tribes by making ‘us’ understand that the onus of better/worse health outcomes lies with the communities and ‘we’ need to work together to remain on the positive side of the finish line. With the First Citizen of India herself belonging to the tribal fraternity, there is certainly light at the end of the tunnel.