Low-cost hospitals are game changers in healthcare

Civil Society News, New Delhi

Harimati Das, 60, a destitute widow with no children, lives in Panchtupi, a remote village in  Murshidabad district of West Bengal. When she was suffering from piles and fistula, kindly neighbours took her for treatment to the Khargram block, some 10 km away. They had heard that a spanking new

PHCs can be made to work with local solutions

Shree Padre

Hura is a sleepy village in the Nanjanagud taluk of Mysore district.  There is nothing in its nondescript landscape to attract people to the place.  So there are no tourists and only occasional visitors from afar because buses and taxis don’t want to ply the distance. Villagers in Hura are

CINI’s Nutrimix works as nutrition for the very poor

It was in the early 1970s that Dr Samir Chaudhuri, then a young pediatrician, chose to work in the villages and slums of West Bengal. He soon found that he needed to go much beyond the confines of his specialisation to improve the health of the pregnant mothers and children

Eye bankers speed up deliveries of corneas

It was late in the evening on December 30 two years ago when Dr Vikas Mittal’s number flashed on Mridula Chhetri Singh’s mobile phone in New Delhi. It was actually his assistant calling on his behalf from Ambala, 200 km or so away. The surgeon urgently needed a corneal tissue

Little learning from disasters

Several major natural disasters in the past few years have destroyed properties, taken lives and pushed tens of thousands into poverty. These episodes have occurred across India and on a scale not witnessed before. Catastrophes in Uttarakhand, Kashmir and, most recently, Chennai, have shown up local administrations as being unable

Sharam yatra raises a stink on open defecation

In 1999 Gita Devi constructed a toilet with funds from the central government’s Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) in her marital home in Maner block of Patna district. Yet her entire family, including Gita, continued to defecate in the open. The toilet would be opened like a showpiece during special occasions

Doctors speaking up, but will the MCI be reformed?

Civil Society News, New Delhi

Dissatisfaction with the medical profession is widespread. There is hardly anyone who doesn’t have a story to tell. Doctors either don’t have time or are too greedy or lack education and values suited to their noble calling. It is also believed that they are in the pockets of pharmaceutical companies

Cadre for midwives to give them status

Kavita Charanji

Public health experts, nurses and NGOs working in women and child health programmes are keen that the government create a special cadre of nurse-midwives for rural India. The midwives should be trained, adequately paid and have a clear role. Although maternal mortality is declining in India, 44,000 women still die

Survivors tell the real tuberculosis story

Deepti Chavan, 34, was diagnosed with tuberculosis when she was 16 and studying for her board exams. An X-ray confirmed it. But, months later, doctors found hers was a case of multi-drug resistant (MDR) TB. Her treatment, she recalls, was excruciating. While one drug made her suicidal, irritable and “lose

Caring service for elderly comes with push button

Subir Roy

Mamata Dasgupta is 81, bright and cheerful. When our photographer and a Support Elders person visited her she herself got around and served them Bijoya sweets. Both her sons live abroad. Earlier she engaged the services of a succession of ayahs but that was not very satisfactory. Now, after engaging

HIV update: Fewer cases, but stigma, drugs?

During a routine check-up at a government hospital, Janak decided to get himself tested for HIV. Three days later, he was diagnosed as HIV positive. Janak, who used to perform in street plays to spread awareness about HIV/AIDS, never thought that one day he himself would get the disease. “When

Patients’ rights: Call for a charter grows louder

Sitting in a coffee shop in Dwarka, Jayant Singh, 40, shows a video on his phone. It is a recording of doctors and medical staff inside an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) wearing no protective gear as they discuss where to shift patients. The standard protocol for staff in ICUs is

Khushi is improving children’s health

Machli jal ki rani hai Jeevan uska pani hai Haath lagao to dar jayegi Bahar nikalo to mar jayegi Andar dalo to tar jayegi Twelve children between three and six years old recite this popular Hindi nursery rhyme about a fish in a sing-song voice, using their hands to illustrate

Private hospitals: Why health can’t be a business

Civil Society News, New Delhi

Every now and then, tragic stories about the consequences of poor quality healthcare make news and come to public attention. They could be stories about infants dying in government hospitals for want of oxygen cylinders as has happened in Gorakhpur or about a private hospital allowing a little girl to

Fernandez hospital is every baby’s hospital

The warmth of Dr Evita Fernandez’s sunny smile has radiated to thousands of newborn babies. Ask any mother who has delivered her baby under Dr Fernandez’s care and she will tell you she felt special and safe. “Be kinder than necessary because everyone you meet is fighting some kind of

Gida’s primary health centre saviour

Umesh Anand

When Dr Jogesh Kumar set foot in the Primary Health Centre (PHC) at Gida in Barmer district of Rajasthan, he found himself in calf-deep water in the reception area. The facility was dank and dilapidated and the water remained stagnant for all of five days. It is not uncommon to

‘We have set up palliative care centres in 8 districts’

Civil Society News, New Delhi

Telangana has become a frontrunner in State-supported cancer treatment by opening palliative care centres in eight districts in partnership with the Pain Relief and Palliative Care Society since 2017. Earlier, in 2007, the government-run MNJ Cancer Institute partnered Two Worlds Cancer Collaboration, a Canadian NGO, to set up a palliative

Pallab Ray: ‘Bring back bacteria, sanitise less’

Raj Machhan

Is the irrational use of antibiotics leading to a public health emergency? Are Indians heading for a situation in which life-saving drugs won’t work on patients who desperately need them? A scientific study under the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) has both good news and bad. The situation is

Araku lifeline eliminates maternal deaths

Surrounded by dense forests, Araku Valley in Andhra Pradesh’s Visakhapatnam district is rich in biodiversity, but its people are poor. So remote are some of the tribal hamlets here that in 2011 they escaped the eye of the census. As a result of this isolation, healthcare services do not reach

The Mansi Way: Reducing child, maternal mortality

Civil Society News, New Delhi

At 18, Sonam Purti is a very young mother in the village of Bundu. Her baby girl is just a few months old and she is full of apprehensions. With every day of motherhood come challenges big and small. Not only does she have to overcome the rigours of childbirth

Smart urban PHCs: The Nagpur model

Umesh Anand

It is a morning like any other at the primary health centre at Futala. A large number of patients have turned up. They occupy steel chairs in the waiting area. A flat-screen TV on the wall keeps them entertained. Nurses in uniform are on duty. A peon, lean and distinctive

Future of healthcare: Combining the traditional and modern

Darshan Shankar

A former foreign minister of Singapore in search of a cure for his Parkinson’s disease admitted himself to the hospital at the Institute of Ayurveda and Integrative Medicine (I-AIM) in Bengaluru.  He had the typical Parkinson’s symptoms of tremors, imbalance and problems with gait. Of course, he had access to the

Ant carries its lockdown load in Assam areas

The lockdown to prevent the spread of the coronavirus comes with multiple challenges, but if you were a mental health patient in a remote village of Assam, what could you possibly do to find help? Fortunately for a few thousand such patients, they have been able to turn to the

Doctors For You weigh in as COVID crisis team

Civil Society News, New Delhi

IT was the middle of June and the new coronavirus had been rampaging its way across cities. The National Capital Region (NCR) had begun experiencing the disease’s onslaught. Lockdowns hadn’t worked in the absence of adequate testing, isolating of patients and tracking of their contacts. As the virus roamed free,

Bridging Delhi’s nutrition deficit in slums

Arvind Singh has become accustomed to distress calls for food, late at night. Since the lockdown began, Singh, who leads  a health and nutrition initiative by Matri Sudha, an NGO in Delhi, has been distributing rations to needy families in Delhi-NCR with his seven-member team and a group of dedicated volunteers.

Muzaffarpur’s hospital on truck from Chennai

Civil Society News, New Delhi

HOW long does it take to set up a cancer hospital? Two years? Or just four weeks? If the hospital happens to be the one coming up in Muzaffarpur in north Bihar, both answers are correct. It was in 2018 that the Bihar government announced the setting up of a

DFY is 14 and growing with many pretty cakes

Civil Society News, New Delhi

ANNIVERSARIES come with their stories. So, when Doctors For You (DFY) completed 14 years in August with an emotional cake-cutting ceremony on Zoom, it was a birthday celebration and also a reminder of how far this group of public-spirited physicians has travelled. In 2007, DFY was born in the hostel

Disability dilemma: The caregiver too needs care

HEALTH WORKERS need to be at peace with themselves even as they work with people who have problems. October is traditionally the month when we recognize the importance of mental health and perhaps it should once be dedicated to the health worker. Just how important and meaningful this can be

Underfunding disability

PRIORITIZATION of funds for disadvantaged sections is a long-accepted precept of fiscal policy in India, and persons with disability (PwDs) clearly comprise a very important part of disadvantaged sections. Yet there is increasing evidence that their welfare needs suffer due to underfunding. This injustice is rooted, to start with, in

Parenting app improves child health with reminders

Usha Rai

EARLY morning, parents of the largely migrant population of Kondli village in Mayur Vihar assembly block in east Delhi and adjoining areas set out for work. The waste mountain at Ghazipur is easily visible at Kondli and often the stench emanating is overpowering. This is one of Delhi’s poorest areas.

With Arsenic creeping up, a helping hand in villages

Civil Society News, New Delhi

Even as temperatures soar in the north, making it necessary to stay indoors, a small band of healthcare activists has been setting out each day in the blazing sun to help rehabilitate people afflicted with arsenic poisoning in villages of eastern Uttar Pradesh. The Inner Voice Foundation’s small team has

Giving nurses a better deal

Aiema Tauheed

Holding the Joyee Award, nurse Melina Rumba Lama, born and raised in Kathmandu, Nepal, spoke frankly about the ground realities of nursing. With over 12 years in the profession, she admitted with a laugh she rarely has time for herself. She moves back and forth between being a nurse at

‘Healthcare should be high quality at a low cost’

Civil Society News, New Delhi

The hospital business is booming. Doctors are demanding and getting astronomical paychecks and commissions. For millions of Indians, however, accessible medical facilities with reliable and affordable services are still a distant dream. It is clearly time for a reset of the system. Several small hospitals with public-spirited doctors have shown

TB time bomb: A survivor tells his story

Saurabh Rane

I was training to be a doctor when I started feeling sick. After two weeks of continued fever, cough and immense weight loss, we decided to go for an X-ray and found I had fluid in my left lung. The doctor told me that it was tuberculosis. I was started

When it is time for a reset, try the Vaidyagrama retreat

Jyoti Pande Lavakare

IT’s a varied group of people from across the world who find their way to Thirumalayampalayam, a dusty hamlet in the Nilgiri Hills of Tamil Nadu. Each of them is looking for something to energize body and mind — lift them from the trough into which they have slipped. There

Going back to Vaidyagrama for that healing feeling

Jyoti Pande Lavakare

REVISITING the experience of a lifetime is fraught with uncertainties. Will it be as good? Can it be better? What if it is a let-down? So it was with me as I headed back to Vaidyagrama, an idyllic village of vaidyas or Ayurveda physicians nestled among trees in the quietly imposing Nilgiri

‘Survival after cancer is tougher for the poor’

Civil Society News, New Delhi

When Dr Ravi Kannan signed up with the Cachar Cancer Hospital in 2006, he was an accomplished surgeon based in Chennai. The shift to a remote corner of Assam was a conscious choice to take his skills where they were needed most. The Cachar hospital had been set up with

Dr Dahar Mohammed in the OPD of the Noolpuzha PHC

Umesh Anand, Benaulim

IT is a cluster of dwellings in the middle of thriving forests in Kerala’s Wayanad district. A sprinkling of families of the Oorali tribe live here in single-room structures built by the government. Painted yellow and numbered, the dwellings are set apart from each other. From one of the dwellings

‘Care delivered by local nurses has been transformative’

Pavitra Mohan and Sanjana B. Mohan

In southern Rajasthan, faced with dwindling land sizes and disappearing forests, many young tribal men would migrate to cities such as Ahmedabad to work as manual labour, leaving behind women, children and the elderly. In the absence of men and cash, they find it even more difficult to access distant

‘The poor have the most complicated illnesses’

Deepak Singh

In 2014, Ashita, my wife, and I moved to the Chinchpada Christian Hospital in Nandurbar district of Maharashtra with our two small children. The hospital was on the verge of closure. We had so many concerns. How would we be able to turn around a small, defunct hospital steeped in

‘I realized Adivasis can do many interventions themselves’

Rajkumar Ramasamy

It was a depressingly cold, wet night in Nalloorkadu, a remote Adivasi village in the lower Kodaikanal hills, accessible only on foot in 1991. I was away from my wife, Mary, an obstetrician trained at Christian Medical College (CMC), Vellore, and my two little daughters who were in Oddanchatram, 40 km

‘In community dreaming we found the answers we were looking for’

John Oommen

My wife, Mercy, and I are originally from Kerala. We grew up in Tamil Nadu, trained in Community Health and Maternity Nursing at Christian Medical College (CMC), Vellore, and then spent over 30 years, from 1993 to 2024, living and working at the Christian Hospital, Bissam Cuttack (CHB), in Rayagada

‘Nurses should be trained better and get more respect’

Civil Society News, New Delhi

NURSES are as important as doctors in delivering healthcare, but look around in India and it may not exactly seem so. From the training of nurses to the roles they should be playing, much remains to be done. The failure to empower them finally weakens the health system as a

Doctors are most unsafe in ICU and emergency

Aiema Tauheed

THE rape and murder of a young woman doctor in the seminar room of R.G. Kar Hospital in Kolkata shocked the nation. But for those who work in hospitals, they have been becoming increasingly unsafe. The R.G. Kar tragedy brought doctors and other health professionals onto the streets to seek

Hospital basics, that’s what junior doctors are asking for

Aiema Tauheed

JUNIOR doctors have called off their agitation in West Bengal on the promise that the state government will hold talks with them on their demands, but right through the Durga Puja festivities they were on hunger strike. It was no small sacrifice which won the hearts of citizens who showed

In a Kolkata hospital : ‘I can’t give you a glass of water here’

Aiema Tauheed

THE resting room in the School of Digestive and Liver Disease at the SSKM Hospital is cramped and grim with broken locks, two beds and a single table. A mattress perched on another two tables serves as a third bed. There is no attached toilet. This is where doctors are

The way to cure vaginismus is to talk about it

Aiema Tauheed

FOR four years a healing programme conducted online has been helping Indian women deal with a little-understood condition called vaginismus which makes them involuntarily freeze when they are at the point of having sex. Like the eye blinks to keep out even a speck of dust, the vagina closes down

Why have people been dying of rabies across India?

Civil Society News, New Delhi

Deaths from rabies caused by dog bites have been taking place in a disaggregated way across the country. In the absence of centrallized information, a reliable number is not available. Based on reports in regional and national newspapers, Civil Society has made a rough count and found that between February this year

Muzaffarpur hospital gets going with surgeries, chemo

Civil Society News, New Delhi

IT is a year since the Homi Bhabha Cancer Hospital and Research Centre opened its prefab doors to patients in Muzaffarpur, bringing specialized care to this small city and its hinterland in Bihar. In the short time since services began at the hospital, 228 major and 683 minor surgeries have

Blessed is the rural hospital

Civil Society News, New Delhi

It’s a dreary morning in May. The news from all over the country is of deaths, cremations and patients trying to find beds in hospitals. In sharp contrast, at Chinchpada, a small village in Maharashtra, a thanksgiving is being held. The occasion is the installation of an oxygen plant at

Doctors out there

Civil Society News, New Delhi

In 1992 a young couple, both doctors, travelled from Madurai in Tamil Nadu to a remote corner of Assam to check out the Makunda Christian Leprosy and General Hospital. They had been told that the hospital needed to be revived, having become defunct 10 years earlier after the missionaries running

‘For lung patients, oxygen gets too expensive’

Patients with lung disease need palliative care as much as they do medicines. When medicines stop working, it is only palliative care that will ease their suffering. Sadly, India lags behind in palliative care and oxygen, which is vital for helping patients along, is not just difficult to come by

Private hospitals: Why health can’t be a business

Every now and then, tragic stories about the consequences of poor quality healthcare make news and come to public attention. They could be stories about infants dying in government hospitals for want of oxygen cylinders as has happened in Gorakhpur or about a private hospital allowing a little girl to

When buildings are hotspots for tuberculosis

Civil Society News, New Delhi

A study of three high-rise resettlement colonies in Mumbai has shown that there is a link between the spread of tuberculosis (TB) and the lack of sunshine and ventilation in apartments built closely together for too many people. The role of the built environment in promoting better public health and

Corona stress? Here are helplines

Sidika Sehgal, New Delhi

A 20-year-old man, who had returned from the United Kingdom and spent 14 days in home quarantine, found that life was just not the same again. He was staying up late to take online classes and talk to friends and as a result he was waking up late. He couldn’t

Mind doctor on call: Nilesh Mohite and ANT

Umesh Anand

It is very early in the morning on the campus of the Action Northeast Trust or Ant, the lovely acronym by which it is known. We are somewhere in the strife-torn Chirang district of Lower Assam, close to the border with Bhutan. This is where the Bodos have been asking

Doctors for you

It was 2007 and Mumbai was reeling under an outbreak of malaria, dengue and leptospirosis. The blood bank at the KEM Hospital was in urgent need of blood and platelets. Dr Ravikant Singh, in the first year of a post-graduate course in public health administration, was leaving the canteen after

PHCs and sub-centres aren’t easy to upgrade

Since the days of the Bhore Committee Report of 1948, the public health community in India has vociferously advocated a comprehensive primary healthcare system. The National Health Policy of 2017 finally acknowledges the importance of such a strategy. The new policy has identified the establishment of Health and Wellness Centres

Smart answer to BP, sugar in rural India

Civil Society News, New Delhi

A rising graph of blood pressure and diabetes cases in India has been found to include rural areas as much as cities, the poor as much as the rich. But what can be the strategies for dealing with these diseases when awareness is lacking and medical facilities aren’t up to

‘The SC order is about women’s empowerment’

On 14 September the Supreme Court banned mass sterilisation camps in India, putting an end to a system that had become synonymous with medical callousness. Every year, young women have died in sterilisation camps because of unhygienic conditions and poorly performed procedures. Around 113 women are officially stated to have

Noora helps families with patient care

When a patient is in hospital in India, he is likely to be accompanied by a number of people — parents, siblings, children, may be even a neighbour. Yet, in most healthcare systems — in India and abroad — these people just wait around while the patient undergoes surgery or

Dr Sitanath De: Jhargram’s first surgeon

Subir Roy

Sitanath De’s main interest in life initially was to play football. But very early in life he also helped out his doctor uncle in their native Jhargram as a compounder assistant, sometimes preparing even a complex item like castor oil mixture. The uncle instilled in him the need to someday

Sudha Sinha: The caring oncologist

Umesh Anand

The MNJ Cancer Hospital at Red Hills in Hyderabad has a good reputation as a government facility. But till six years ago it had no clue as to what to do with the number of children brought to it for admission. The hospital was only for adult patients and the