It is quite ironical that in India, where people come for medical aid and treatment from all over the world – from underdeveloped to highly developed countries, to 1722 patients there is just one doctor. This high patient-doctor ratio is alarming and needs immediate attention.
There are definitely significant advancements and achievements in the field of healthcare. But whatever may be the claims about it as an industry – ‘a sunrise industry’, the fact remains that public health is a neglected area in both urban as well as rural areas. This situation is rather grim in the rural areas; and this situation gets highlighted only when there’s an epidemic or endemic. Infrastructure also lacks pathetically, first doctors are scarce, and second even if they are there, in the absence of necessary machines and equipments they are hardly able to do anything except rushing the patients to trauma centres of nearby cities. Many patients are not fortunate enough to make it to the ICUs.
Non-availability of ambulances and adequately stocked dispensaries is another factor which deteriorates the situation further. Many a times because the medicine was not available, or in case of emergency, an ambulance was not available, a patient has to bid goodbye to his family.
Sai Milan considers this to be a gross neglect of the human life and erosion of the human values. After completing their degree, a majority of the doctors either settle in urban parts of India or they go and serve abroad for hefty packages. Very few go to rural places and serve the society and the nation. It may not be an exaggeration of the fact that in case of an emergency, a majority of the hospitals in the rural areas cannot perform even minor operations. Our extremely humble contribution of three ambulances and two mobile dispensaries is just a speck of what is required and what we want to do. If required, we hire the ambulance from outside and provide to the needy on purely service basis only.
Through this medium we would like to make an appeal to our visitors to understand the gravity of the situation and come forward, not just to help and contribute us in our mission to improve health conditions and awareness in the rural areas, but also to enable us to create a movement in this area of neglect. Opening of new IITs and IIMs is good, but what we require more today is more number of medical colleges and institutes like AIIMS. We need to serve not just the Multi-nationals but Multitude of common people and downtrodden too.
We are already a nation of more than 1.3 billion people. We at Sai Baba Charitable Trust believe that we don’t even need to look up to the government always – if we have the will, we can create the infrastructure we need, through collective participation. Sai Milan through its active discussion forums generates awareness regarding such socially relevant issues and concerns and at the same time works to gather public opinion as well.
