Over the last few years, Smile Foundation is trying to address the issues of health by running its Mobile Medical Unit named Smile on Wheels (SoW) in different parts of the country. Foundation's experience says increasing the health seeking behaviour of the poor can only be achieved by reaching the primary health facilities at their door step. It is one of the major achievements that foundation has been successfully accomplished the goal to prevent people from health diseases by providing remedies or spreading awareness in Bihar.

Sanjeevan”, the Mobile Medical Unit has rendered curative, preventive and promotive health services in 10 villages of District Madhepura, Bihar for 5 years i.e. from 2012 to 2017. Under the planned interventions and with support from the reputed corporate SIEMENS, Smile Foundation was successfully able to run this project. The project reached over one Lakh beneficiaries residing in the selected 10 villages. Sanjeevan primarily focused on providing health care services at the doorsteps of those underprivileged people, who had limited access to health facilities in the selected area. To overcome the barrier of poor transportation, financial background and to provide the basic and primary health care services, Siemens joined hands with Smile Foundation to provide comprehensive health interventions in 10 communities/villages of Madhepura District. The Sanjeevan Mobile Health Clinic, technically supported by Smile foundation started its operations in the ten identified villages from 16th March, 2012. Since its inception, the mobile clinic has been rendered curative, preventive and promotive health care services on a regular basis to the poor, deprived and disadvantaged people residing in these villages.

Under this project, Smile on Wheels addressed the health issues of the most deprived class of the rural society; in the most backward area of Koshi zone. This zone was badly affected by the floods in 2008 and district Madhepura was in the list of the worst affected areas of Bihar. A total of 10 villages have been covered in 2 blocks namely Madhepura and Ghalirdh of Madhepura district, Bihar.

When a moving vehicle providing quality health services at the doorsteps of villagers known as “Sanjeevan Mobile Clinic” was introduced there was a significant change in the health practices of the villagers. During the baseline survey in these villages, it came into picture that the majority of pregnant women never completed their ante natal & post natal check-ups due to lack of awareness. Ironically, this was the situation when the villages had ASHA as well as Anganwadi workers. So despite of the presence of the ASHAs and AWWs in the villages, the services such as ANC and PNC were not available and accessible to pregnant and lactating women. Besides, it has been observed that the targeted villages are mostly inhabited by backward strata of the society i.e. SC and OBC community. The sample survey reveals that 90% of the people living in the villages are Below Poverty Line and are earning their livelihood by doing labor work and few are in agricultural work mostly landless.

The study unveiled that the community is not aware about MCH components comprising of ANC/PNC, Institutional Delivery and Immunization. Even the components have not been propagated by the government bodies existing at grass root level.

Reaching the under-served and under-privileged has been one of the primary objectives of the SoW project. A total of over one Lakh beneficiaries have been provided with health care facilities.

Indicators for the project are mentioned below:

• Increase in community accessing primary healthcare services
• Improvement in health status of pregnant & lactating mothers
• Improvement in health of children through school health program
• Increase in knowledge on health & hygiene related issues & Govt. schemes
• Improvement in government health delivery system