Nutritious Diet

Most of the children at LEADS come from very poor backgrounds and are often suffering from malnutrition due to lack of proper food and healthcare facilities. This often results in the children dropping out from schools due to poor health. To meet the nutritional requirements of the children, LEADS everyday provides them a healthy diet comprising of rice, vegetables, meat, milk, eggs, seasonal fruits, bread, jelly etc.

Regular Health Checkups

It has been noted that poor living conditions, resulting in ill health, is the major reason for irregular attendance and poor performance at the schools, ultimately resulting in drop outs in many cases.

To improve this situation, LEADS provides health-support to the children of EQUIP and their families through its HEALTH project. Medical check-ups of the children are done periodically by different doctors on a voluntary basis."I am Mohona. I gave my PSC (Primary School Certificate) in 2011 and got A Grade. I was in Class Two at Pragoti Primary School when I joined LEADS. My father is a laborer and my mother is a housewife.

I was suffering from fever for a long time. I used to go to nearby pharmacies and take painkillers, instead of going to any doctor. When I joined LEADS and told them about my problem, they sent me to the Head of the Nephrology Department of Dhaka Medical College, who did the initial check-up. I was diagnosed with Kidney disease. I was under treatment for almost a year. LEADS provided full financial support for my treatment, and now I am completely cured.

I am now a student of Grade 6 at Dhanmondi Girls High School and I still study at LEADS."

Prescribed Medicine

LEADS has been working on creating awareness among the children, specially their parents, not to take medicines without consulting with a doctor first. It is often seen that in case of any health problem, these people go to pharmacies instead of hospitals, and take medicines without any doctor’s advice.

LEADS now sends children and their families to doctors/specialist at different hospitals and shares cost of the prescribed medicines. LEADS also does continuous follow-up to see if the condition of the patients are improved.

Referral to Hospitals

In many cases, it has been seen that the parents not even aware of where to go in case of any disease or health problem, and even if they know, they do not go to a doctor unless the problem becomes acute. As such, LEADS sends children with serious health problems to different hospitals such as Dhaka Medical College, Shahid Shorawardy Hospital, Justice Amin Ahmed Charity Clinic etc. at its own expense.

LEADS tries to get required pathological tests done for free or at lower costs from different government hospitals, whenever possible. However, when not possible, LEADS goes for a cost-sharing strategy and shares 60% of the expenses in case of children and their families who availed treatment through LEADS.