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| Maya Devi Hospital, in rural India |
High Impact
in Rural India
By Anil Jain
Five years ago, the Rotary Club of Calgary Centennial offered to help
fund the construction of a hospital for women and children in India, agreed to
put $10,000 into the project, and asked RC Calgary to do the same. This was an
audacious proposal in many senses: even in India, could such sums build a
hospital?
A Calgary-based charity named CHILD Foundation took up the challenge,
and the results have been remarkable by almost any standard. Thousands of women
and children now have access to modern medicine for the first time in their lives.
The hospital project was inspired by the story of a simple woman, Maya
Devi, who lived in this small (by Indian standards) village of 25,000.Maya Devi understood
the health challenges for women in the area, especially during pregnancy and
delivery.
Cultural traditions dictated that women not be
examined by male doctors. As a result, in medical emergencies women had to make
the long trek to New Delhi or other cities with the hope of finding a female
practitioner.
Maya
Devi gave birth to 10 children, two of whom did not survive to their first
birthday. She became a strong advocate for women’s health and education and
held a lifelong dream of doing something for the women of the village. Upon her
death, her assets went to a local NGO, MOTHER Foundation, for a women’s
hospital in the village. These assets included a site for the hospital; a site on
which to build a residence for medical staff; and another small site to build a
pharmacy, an office or ambulance parking.
Project: In
collaboration with Calgary-based CHILD Foundation, the Rotary Club of Calgary
Centennial championed the project. Supported by the Rotary Club of Calgary and
by individual and corporate donations, the basic hospital began to provide
medical care in October 2011 – less than two years after the project was first
proposed.
The hospital’s primary purpose is to provide healthcare to women and
children from the community. It is staffed with four doctors and four nurses.
In addition to the paid staff, Canadian doctors have volunteered at the
hospital. These medical professionals provide basic medical care to local
clients, plus health, hygiene, and nutrition education. Since opening its
doors, the hospital has logged 40,000 service visits by patients. Directly or
indirectly, the hospital benefits communities totalling approximately 50,000.
It has saved many lives, and improved quality of life throughout the community.
Opportunity: The
medical teams identified a number of key priorities to enable the hospital to
better serve the needs of its community. These included installation of a
pathology laboratory for blood and urine work; installation of solar power to
provide reliable electricity; and the acquisition of basic diagnostic equipment
– for example, for ultrasound. The Rotary organization raised funds for these
priorities in 2013 and this equipment is now being installed.
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| Solar Panels |
With the recent
commissioning of 5 KW solar power plant, the hospital is the only building in a
wide geographical area with reliable, continuous electricity.
Rotary has accomplished a great deal already, but
much remains to be done. Water-borne diseases are the most common source of
illness in the village. Without toilets and other sanitation projects, open
defecation has a huge negative impact on the health of the community.
To address these issues, RC Calgary Centennial is again taking the lead.
With project leadership from two Calgary-area clubs
and, hopefully, participation from clubs in the US and India, Rotary has
initiated a sanitation and clean water project for the village. The project will
make clean drinking water and basic sanitation facilities available to
villagers. The project’s WaterHealth water
purification system – a system developed by a commercial enterprise operating
in the social sector, provides an off-the-shelf modern technology for purifying
water in a rural setting. This system will use electricity provided by solar panels
available from Maya Devi Charitable Hospital.
For areas distant from this basic, high-quality water system, the
project will provide bio-sand filters to distant communities. This system is an
adaptation of the traditional slow sand filter, which has been used for
community drinking water treatment for 20 years. Expertise based on using this
system is available around the world from the Calgary-based Centre for
Affordable Water and Sanitation Technology (CAWST).
Anil Jain is
president of the Rotary Club of Calgary Centennial, and the volunteer executive
director of CHILD Foundation. The foundation’s annual overhead represents 2% of
total income.
