India's `magic train' throws new lifeline to villages
Wednesday, 13 June 2007
Jay Shankar
Inside a makeshift tent pitched on a west Indian railway platform, Daji Mohite awaits an operation to remove cataracts. He's about to board the Lifeline Express, the world's oldest charity hospital on train tracks.
``I have waited for so many years for this surgery,'' says Mohite, 66, a retired factory worker who survives on his one-time 150,000-rupee ($3,700) pension payout. ``One fine day the train comes here and it is sheer magic. I will be able to see better.''
Volunteer doctors on the express have cared for 450,000 Indians free of charge since 1991. Working at three operating tables, they treat cleft palates and limbs distorted by polio in the young, and restore sight and hearing to the aged. The train's five-week stop at Palghar station in Maharashtra state, where Mohite was waiting, will be its last. A larger model, donated by state-owned Indian Railways, takes to the tracks this month.
The train helps fill the health-care void in India's villages, where almost half the 600 million people survive below the poverty line. While 60 percent of Indians live in rural areas, only a fifth of the nation's doctors work in the countryside.
``One mobile hospital train is not even a drop of water in the ocean as far as Indian rural health care is concerned,'' says George Mathew, director of the Institute of Social Sciences, a research group in New Delhi.
Blindness, for example, affects about 13 million Indians, according to the World Health Organization. Cataracts, or clouding of the eyes, are responsible for 80 percent of cases.
Most cataract-related blindness is preventable given swift treatment, says Satish Kudke, 26, an eye surgeon on the train. Such care isn't an option for most patients he sees, some of whom are too malnourished to withstand surgery, he says.
``We have done so much, yet we have a feeling we have done nothing,'' says Randhir Vishwen, chief executive officer for the Lifeline Express, as he watches buses disgorge patients from areas around Palghar. ``There are thousands in these villages living with disabilities.''
The Lifeline Express, dubbed the ``Magic Train'' by its patients, is run by the Impact India Foundation, a Mumbai-based charity formed in 1983 to prevent disabilities among the rural poor. Each five-week stop costs about 2 million rupees.
Backed by United Nations agencies and the Indian government, the express is sponsored by companies such as Mumbai-based Tata Chemicals Ltd. and state-owned Coal India Ltd., as well as local administrations in the areas it visits.
The 20 to 30 doctors and nurses aboard the train have crisscrossed 15 states, performing 70,000 operations since 1991, says Zelma Lazarus, the foundation's CEO. They also work with local governments to educate people about health issues.
``The train is not here to be an oasis in the middle of a desert and then disappear,'' she says.
The daily routine starts with the departure of a diagnostic van that takes a doctor and basic equipment to villages to screen patients and record medical histories.
The doctor treats people on the spot or recommends a trip to the train. Along with operating tables, the express houses living quarters for the staff, a generator, meeting room, recovery area and a training room for 50 people.
Persuading some villages to send patients for surgery isn't easy, says Saroj Mukerjea, a doctor and project director for Impact India.
``If a woman has a cleft lip, the village head will say, `She is cursed. Why do you bother?''' Mukerjea says. ``If the child is a female, the parents or the elders show no interest in treating them as they cannot earn as well as the boys.''
Others don't want the train to leave. In Maharashtra four years ago, villagers laid on the tracks to try to prevent its departure, CEO Lazarus says.
About 290 million Indian villagers live in poverty, defined by the World Bank as surviving on $2 a day. A 10th of those are disabled or handicapped, according to the Health Ministry.
Illnesses create even more hardships. Money borrowed to pay health bills drives 25 percent of hospitalized patients into extreme poverty, government figures show.
For Vasanti Ramachandra Meher, the express is a godsend. The widow says her son paid 4,000 rupees -- his monthly salary -- for her cataract operation six years ago.
At Palghar station, her other eye was cured for free.
``The hospital has come to the village instead of us going around searching for a doctor,'' says Ramachandra Meher, 65, smoothing her pale brown sari. ``It is a magic train.''
The new five-coach express probably will make its inaugural trip in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, Lazarus says.
The discarded train, with four ancient carriages, will be parked near Palghar to function as a permanent hospital.
Mohite, the cataract patient, is already plotting a return visit. His 15-year-old grandson is hard of hearing, he says.
``I want the magic to be repeated,'' Mohite says.
Bloomberg
Inside a makeshift tent pitched on a west Indian railway platform, Daji Mohite awaits an operation to remove cataracts. He's about to board the Lifeline Express, the world's oldest charity hospital on train tracks.
``I have waited for so many years for this surgery,'' says Mohite, 66, a retired factory worker who survives on his one-time 150,000-rupee ($3,700) pension payout. ``One fine day the train comes here and it is sheer magic. I will be able to see better.''
Volunteer doctors on the express have cared for 450,000 Indians free of charge since 1991. Working at three operating tables, they treat cleft palates and limbs distorted by polio in the young, and restore sight and hearing to the aged. The train's five-week stop at Palghar station in Maharashtra state, where Mohite was waiting, will be its last. A larger model, donated by state-owned Indian Railways, takes to the tracks this month.
The train helps fill the health-care void in India's villages, where almost half the 600 million people survive below the poverty line. While 60 percent of Indians live in rural areas, only a fifth of the nation's doctors work in the countryside.
``One mobile hospital train is not even a drop of water in the ocean as far as Indian rural health care is concerned,'' says George Mathew, director of the Institute of Social Sciences, a research group in New Delhi.
Blindness, for example, affects about 13 million Indians, according to the World Health Organization. Cataracts, or clouding of the eyes, are responsible for 80 percent of cases.
Most cataract-related blindness is preventable given swift treatment, says Satish Kudke, 26, an eye surgeon on the train. Such care isn't an option for most patients he sees, some of whom are too malnourished to withstand surgery, he says.
``We have done so much, yet we have a feeling we have done nothing,'' says Randhir Vishwen, chief executive officer for the Lifeline Express, as he watches buses disgorge patients from areas around Palghar. ``There are thousands in these villages living with disabilities.''
The Lifeline Express, dubbed the ``Magic Train'' by its patients, is run by the Impact India Foundation, a Mumbai-based charity formed in 1983 to prevent disabilities among the rural poor. Each five-week stop costs about 2 million rupees.
Backed by United Nations agencies and the Indian government, the express is sponsored by companies such as Mumbai-based Tata Chemicals Ltd. and state-owned Coal India Ltd., as well as local administrations in the areas it visits.
The 20 to 30 doctors and nurses aboard the train have crisscrossed 15 states, performing 70,000 operations since 1991, says Zelma Lazarus, the foundation's CEO. They also work with local governments to educate people about health issues.
``The train is not here to be an oasis in the middle of a desert and then disappear,'' she says.
The daily routine starts with the departure of a diagnostic van that takes a doctor and basic equipment to villages to screen patients and record medical histories.
The doctor treats people on the spot or recommends a trip to the train. Along with operating tables, the express houses living quarters for the staff, a generator, meeting room, recovery area and a training room for 50 people.
Persuading some villages to send patients for surgery isn't easy, says Saroj Mukerjea, a doctor and project director for Impact India.
``If a woman has a cleft lip, the village head will say, `She is cursed. Why do you bother?''' Mukerjea says. ``If the child is a female, the parents or the elders show no interest in treating them as they cannot earn as well as the boys.''
Others don't want the train to leave. In Maharashtra four years ago, villagers laid on the tracks to try to prevent its departure, CEO Lazarus says.
About 290 million Indian villagers live in poverty, defined by the World Bank as surviving on $2 a day. A 10th of those are disabled or handicapped, according to the Health Ministry.
Illnesses create even more hardships. Money borrowed to pay health bills drives 25 percent of hospitalized patients into extreme poverty, government figures show.
For Vasanti Ramachandra Meher, the express is a godsend. The widow says her son paid 4,000 rupees -- his monthly salary -- for her cataract operation six years ago.
At Palghar station, her other eye was cured for free.
``The hospital has come to the village instead of us going around searching for a doctor,'' says Ramachandra Meher, 65, smoothing her pale brown sari. ``It is a magic train.''
The new five-coach express probably will make its inaugural trip in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, Lazarus says.
The discarded train, with four ancient carriages, will be parked near Palghar to function as a permanent hospital.
Mohite, the cataract patient, is already plotting a return visit. His 15-year-old grandson is hard of hearing, he says.
``I want the magic to be repeated,'' Mohite says.
Bloomberg