Calcutta Notebook
D R C

In the small hours of a win ter morning after jangal mahal, when one comes close to the cardinal sin of despair, the trick of revival is to rove (by internet if one's mind is captive in a degenerating mass of nerves and bone) among the initiatives taken by men and women, most ordinary of the ordinary, and, for this reason, most extraordinary of the extraordinary. Still, one is seldom prepared to encounter something so unexpected as the sramajibi haspatal of Belur, even if one has been a guest at shahid hospital, Dalli-Rajhara.

The latter was built by heroes who had risen at the call of a since-martyred hero. It had a background accompaniment of something like a Handel overture. But the sramajibi haspatal has been the slow and steady materialisation of the dream of a band of workers whose factory (Indo-Japan Steel) had been closed by the owners some 25 years ago, and the surrounding community, whose determination in the face of goonda-gardi by the owners and political and administrative pressures preserved the land under the ruined factory and replaced it by a one-room dispensary, then, a one-storeyed clinic with a few beds, and, now, a three-storeyed hospital, with an operating theatre where even open heart surgery is done at about one fourth the cost of the least package offered by corporate, (w/o medicines or cost of valve). Due is also recognition of the interest shown by an ebullient and controversial former land and land reforms minister who saved a land adjoining the original factory land from aggressive sharks by vesting its ownership in the government.

High quality of the medical care offered is ensured by a dedicated group of doctors, and, apart from them and the nursing and hospital staff, it is the community and well-wishers who provide subsidy and finance. The organisers claim no money is taken from the government or any corporate sponsor.

Shameless profiteering in the name of medical treatment and helplessness of the weaker sections of society in the callous world of public hospitals being the norm, the uniqueness of this hospital with a difference cannot be understood without knowing the stories of patients like Umasankar and Sirajul.

Umasankar, a truck driver from the industrial city of Durgapur in West Bengal met with a severe accident which seriously damaged both his legs. Government hospital doctors from Durgapur decided to amputate the legs at high cost. Umasankar somehow fled the hospital with the help of his friends and reached Sramajibi hospital where the never-say-die doctors made him stand on his own legs again through a series of complicated operations. The grateful driver never misses an opportunity to meet his friends of this hospital whenever he drives through G T Road.

Sirajul Islam was a poor young labourer who was engaged in masonry work in the Sramajibi hospital when his breathlessness was noticed. Investigations revealed a serious and complicated cardiac problem. At that point of time the hospital didn't have any cardio thoracic unit. His family knocked at the doors of government hospitals, where information of the possible bill brought further misery and shock to the helpless family. But Sramajibi hospital refused to be a silent witness to an impending catastrophe. They decided to dare to try to save this helpless young boy with a makeshift arrangement at their own cost. The boy survived, free of cost. In reality it was the triumph of the humanity of the doctors, staff, nurses. The story didn't end there. The hospital, in order to save many more Sirajuls, ventured to undertake a project for a full fledged cardio-thoracic unit, capable of carrying out by-pass surgery or valve replacement.

This project "Hriday chhunye" (Touching the Heart) was an instant success due to the initiative of socially aware people from all walks of life.

A programme called "Chalo jai rogir bari(Come to the Home of the Afflicted)" is taking health service to the doorstep of rural people. In this programme trained health workers visit every village home in an earmarked area.

People of the Left will remember the junior doctors' movement of the late seventies and early eighties.. The doctors presently serving the sramajibi haspatal are the crop of that movement, and are almost white-haired now.

The special ambience of social change and medical activism which led to the junior doctors' movement is absent now. Sramajibi haspatal and the other health service centres sponsored by the community are facing an acute shortage of doctors. Young entrants into and pass-outs from the fundamental bachelor's MBBS courses for medicine and surgery, recognised by the Medical Council of India, are interested mainly in pursuing individual careers.

These circumstances have forced the Sramajibi haspatal and its friends to think of a quality medical course and training for indigent and meritorious boys and girls suited to the needs of the community. The aim is to train doctors imbued with a spirit of service to the community and an intellect alive to scientific enquiry. Eminent teachers and doctors are preparing a possible curriculum and syllabi, reviving the efforts of past workers in the field for a curriculum in which the intellectual traffic would be from OPD and wards to the classroom and not the other way round(and with this direction of the traffic from the very first day, not at the fag end of the course).

Frontier
Vol. 45, No. 27, 13-19, 2013

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