Education and Health Practices of Warli Tribes: A Case Study

Abstract

Education enables the scheduled tribes who happen to be backward to acquire knowledge about the individual’s environment, development avenues, and programmes being implemented for their well-being. Adult education in India does not end with providing literacy, functionality and awareness. It extends further leading to life long education and continuing education. The scope of adult education extends to all sections of the community and adult education is a pre-condition to accelerate the pace and magnitude of development especially among the scheduled tribes.Health education can be defined as that part of health care, that is concerned with promoting health behaviour. It is a process that informs, motivates and helps people to adapt and maintain healthy practices and life styles, advocates environmental changes as needed to facilitate this goal and conducts professional training and research to the same end. Health education encourages behaviour that promotes health, prevents illness, cures diseases and facilitates rehabilitation. The needs and interests of individuals, families groups, organisations and communities form the core of Health Education Programme. It is rightly said, that the roots of Health Education are two in number. One, is the basic sciences which deal with Health Knowledge. It is essential, that people are oriented in the various components of health namely, human biology, nutrition, hygiene consisting of personal and environmental hygiene, family health care, control of communicable and non-communicable diseases, mental health, prevention of accidents and use of the Health Services. The second is the behavioural sciences like Sociology, Psychology and Social Anthropology. Health Education brings together, the art and science of Medicine, and the Principles and practice of General Education. Education is primarily a matter of Communication. So, Health Education uses the various channels of communication, like audio-visual aids, group discussions, individual counselling etc. The objective is to create an awareness in the people, then to generate interest in them and ultimately motivate them to adopt the health practices in their own lives. In this paper authors will explain the status of education and health practices of the Warli Tribes of the Maharashtra.