India's Untouchables

In the rural village of Jawalke, India a health project by the name of the Comprehensive Rural Health Project is beginning to change the face of India's caste systems. Before the program women of the untouchable caste were not allowed shoes or even to touch the community water pump. Now they are delivering babies and treating village health problems. The project takes lower caste women and educates them on common rural health problems and sanitation. In turn the women alleviate much of the suffering that comes with poverty for members of the village. It was not a simple thing to do to gain these lower caste women entrance into the homes of the sick, but after a few medical success the village began to accept them.
With the introduction of these village health workers much of the infant mortality and leprosy that was common in the village has been done away with. One worker stated that she has delivered 551 babies and has yet to lose a single mother or child. Now almost all the village children receive vaccinations. These women who have received little to no education, hold no medical degree of any kind, and were as of a few years ago considered untouchable are slowly transforming rural India into a place of acceptance and health. These small steps have and continue to allow rural Indian culture to evolve into one that prides itself on it's preservation of the human rights that it used to deny to the poor, destitute, female, young, and/ or uneducated members of it's society.

Information obtained from http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/12/community-doctors/rosenberg-text/1 and http://www.jamkhed.org/impact.shtml.