An Oasis In The Desert

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One hundred and forty four km due north of Raipur is the nondescript village of Ganiyari. My visit to this village was to see what had made four doctors from AIIMS start a hospital almost 2 decades ago, what made them expand it into a large community health project that was Jan Swasthya Sahyog (JSS), what made them tick and what would keep them ticking.

Of those, I met Yogesh Jain, a Pediatrician by training and a master of many trades by action, his wife Rachana, a Gynecologist, Raman Kataria the humble Pediatric Surgeon and his wife Anju a Pediatrician and a practicing Anesthesiologist. And what a ship they run!!

On a non OPD day, the hospital seemed crowded. A routine OPD day draws up to 350 people from mostly tribal populations from a few hundred kilometers away. With no government facilities existing nearby that can match the services rendered here, it is no wonder that crowds throng here for all kinds of problems from communicable illnesses like tuberculosis, malaria, leprosy, infections among children to rheumatic heart disease lean diabetes, hypertension, cancers and sickle cell anaemia amongst others. Many of these patients are chronically ill and their state is worsened due to overriding malnutrition.

Raman may do upto 60 surgeries a week!! I saw a happy 2-month-old baby who had been operated for Pyloric Stenosis, a week ago. Her mother had got her from Calcutta and found out that this could be a good place to get her child operated. A major procedure under General Anaesthesia that might cost a few lakhs in a city hospital cost the family less than ten thousand Rupees in all, including investigations and medication. There were the very sick, very malnourished, and the routine patients, all waiting in corridors, lying on the floor – waiting for their turn. It seemed that they had found their oasis in the desert and their thirst would now be quenched.

I was then taken to the health Centre at Semariya `manned’ by Kailasha, a young ANM, who was a recent graduate from the nursing school run by JSS. She is supported by other senior health workers and a center manager. She showed me her delivery room where she conducts 3-5 deliveries a month, her clinic where she examines and treats patients with minor ailments, gives first aid, examines and advises antenatal mothers and manages a fair amount of scorpion and snake bites. We also saw the preparation of a nourishing `sattu’, made from roasted wheat, Jau grain (Barley), black gram and sugar. This is ground into a powder and fed daily to all children in the `Phulwari’ crèche. Over a hundred such Phulwaris run in 54 program villages and are ably managed by trained workers.

I visited the Phulwaris at Karikachar village run by Parmeshwari and Shivkumari. Both the women were amazing managers of a group of some 15 children ranging between 8 months and 5 years of age. Their work ranged from keeping the children clean, relatively quiet, very happy, feeding them khichdi and sattu, getting them into a handwashing routine before and after their snack to the recitation of fun poems. Shivkumari is also a practicing Dai (Traditional Birth Attendant). She narrated the story of Jyoti, a five year old who was born with a weight of a mere 1.2 kg and the manner in which they got help from doctors at JSS Ganiyari who helped to save her life as well as get her to a fair level of nutrition now. Jyoti is currently mildly malnourished for her age but is one of the brightest of the lot and was the leader for poetry recitation. The Phulwaris are crèches that help working tribal mothers to leave their children in able hands for the day. They provide a loving atmosphere for children to develop their bodies and minds along with social, language and emotional skills during the critical first three years of life.

The team that started JSS are supported by many able young managers. Of these I met and interacted with Sushil and Lokesh from TISS, who are actively coordinating clinical and community health activities; Harendra and Bhupen, who passionately explained in innovations in practical use at the AppTech (Appropriate Technology) centre; Mr Bhasker Parmanand, the administrator who patiently chaperoned me around the hospital and its premises. The day ended with interacting with the DNB students, some volunteers from India and abroad and the managers who were very keen to understand where I came from, what we did in Aarohi, an organization for rural development in the Himalayas, what our modus operandi was, our cultural context and our experience in the development sector, our joys and our lows!

I leave with the feeling of having quenched my thirst in this oasis and feel blessed to know that goodness exists in small pockets of our world and feel even more that we need to coalesce and build this force of positivity to rapidly fast forward the pace of change in our country.

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