TRIBAL HEALTH INITIATIVE : A Profile (By Dr. Lalitha and Regi George)

A long time ago in China, alone in the mountains stood a little village. There was something special about this village: they carried on a system of exchange the world had long abandoned. The blacksmith would pay the carpenter with some utensils for his help, the potter would pay the priest with some pots for any spiritual favors and so on.

The doctor too was paid, but not for treating any illness. Villagers would pay him in kind, but only if they had NOT fallen ill that year!

This story sparked off a thought process in both of us - both doctors. We had to strive to make a community healthy, and not just be satisfied with treating diseases. By 1993, we had worked for more than 10 years at Gandhi Gram Hospital in Tamil Nadu and had come to a decision that we had to move out to one of the thousands of locations all over the country that lacked even the basic medical facilities.

Soon we found ourselves in Sittilingi, having checked out more than 10 location all over the county with our friends, and decided that this is the place where we want to be. We started with a single thatched shed which served as both our out patient facility and rudimentary operation theater. This has now grown into a small hospital with 24 beds and a few support facilities.

We no longer have people coming in dehydrated after a bout of gastroenteritis and the number of children coming in with pneumonia is definitely declining. What has increased is the number of women coming in for safe confinement, the number of surgeries, and also pre-term / low-birth-weight newborns brought in for neonatal care.

Its been our field health programs and our efforts to train locals as health auxiliaries, which we have focused on from the beginning that has paid off in the long run. There is a better understanding in the community on what simple measures contribute to a healthier life and what is preventable and what needs further attention.

So hopefully the story of the Chinese village has a distant parallel in our efforts to help the people of Sittilingi.

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