Set Up A New Rural Healthcare Centre, India

At Rural Health Care Foundation we not only provide medical treatment to the patients, but also create a lovely human-bond with them by campaigns and drives that we keep doing for making the life rural poor a little better. As the time approached for submitting a report to our donors, I on behalf of RHCF thought to share the story of our beneficiary who received more than just medical treatment:

The Stroy of Santoo

“All I have are coins” said Santoo while giving fees for medical treatment. Flower-seller by profession Santoo is 80 year old, resides at Notun Bazaar in Jyotish Roy Road and a beneficiary of Rural Health Care Foundation.

The centre-in charge (Jyotish Roy Road unit) says that every time Santoo visits the health centre he hands them forty coins in order pay the fees. He never has a note possibly because he always earns in pennies.

 “I have a daughter but she cannot look after me because she is not economically so strong, besides my grand-daughter is suffering from arthritis and she has to be treated. I’ m old and lived most of my life but my grand-daughter is young and I want her to live like a normal healthy child” says Santoo, while tears ran down through his cheeks.

The rush of emotions that Santoo was going through could be easily seen on his face, while he received the blanket under “Sirf Ek Kambal” drive by Kolkata Gives in association with RHCF. “This winter will not be same as all these years, tonight I shall sleep warm enough to see some beautiful dreams” last words by Santoo before he left our centre.

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We at RHCF keep working to provide healthcare service to the rural and urban slum poor. Additionally, we ensure to seek other ways to benefit them and serve them to the fulllest. Health Camps, Blanket drive etc are few such methods that we keep conducting at our healthcare units.

It has indeed been overwhelming to receive funds that have allowed us to set up and operate seventeen primary health care centres (11 Rural and 7 Urban Clinics) in and across West Bengal, India, reaching out to over 1.7 million people. Each centre runs four departments namely General Medicine, Optometry, Dentistry and Homoeopathy. At the cost of INR 60 ($ 1), patients are provided diagnosis and free medicine for seven days. The centres also provide free spectacles to those in need. Besides this, each primary health care centre, in collaboration with other organizations, facilitates free cataract and cleft lip/palate surgeries for those in need.

The task at hand is huge and our intention over the last few years has been to spread out and serve as many people as we can, by establishing more such healthcare centres. The need in the current times is to scale up our existing operations to other districts of the state. In order to operate and set up new centres, we require constant funding. The funds would be used for purchasing medical equipment, hiring medical as well as support staff, staff at the Head Office, setting up infrastructure at the clinics, purchasing medicines etc.

Since the Government run medical facilities are sparse in these rural areas, news of patients benefitting from the treatment received at our clinics spreads to the neighboring villages, resulting in constant increase of footfall of patients at our clinics. We therefore feel the need to reach out to more such areas addressing the needs of more patients.