Keya Sarkar: United we heal

PEOPLE LIKE THEM

With the air of gloom in Santiniketan ever since the Nobel medal went missing, a lot of the residents talk of how the "spirit of Santiniketan is lost". Although I do not personally subscribe to a theory that restricts "spirit" to a lump of metal, however precious, it was nice to discover last week how the spirit is indeed alive.

History has it that Tagore had started 14 cooperative medical centres in and around Santiniketan. Of these, one is still alive in a village called Surul, serving nine villages around it. When I was called upon to help with the management of this centre, I was hard put to figure out how my "corporate experience" could possibly be of use.

The centre, I discovered, is run as a cooperative such that all members together can afford better facilities than they can on their own. Sugar cooperatives, milk cooperatives and oil cooperatives I was familiar with, but a medical cooperative?

The members, I learnt, had to pay Rs 30 a year as membership fees in order to be eligible to get the doctor's attention at Rs 5 every time anybody from the member's family fell ill. The centre was impressive "" a spacious two storey structure, clean, freshly painted and most important all the medical equipment non-rusty.

As the secretary explained how they work, my amazement grew. A doctor was available 24 hours and he had quarters above the health centre. The idea was to be able to have adequate facilities to allow a seriously ill villager to survive the night, to reach a hospital in the morning.

And the centre had just also got news that an NGO in the health care sector was willing to grant them an ambulance.

So what was the problem? Where could I possibly help? The secretary handed me the balance sheet of the last fiscal. Oddly, almost 85 per cent of the money available to the centre was locked up in fixed assets.

When taken on a tour of the building I saw the doctor's plush living quarters and wondered aloud whether or not all the money was getting spent in building and furniture rather than on medical facilities.

The secretary explained that the building, the doctor's quarters and the salary of the resident doctor were all sponsored by some rich resident of the village (now NRIs) and the centre could not use the money for any other purpose.

I had already spent a good half an hour at the centre and still had no clue of the problem. Something was amiss though. In all the time that I had been there I had not seen a single patient. "So where are the patients," I asked the secretary, not being able to contain my curiosity any longer. "That is the problem," he said. "We have all the facilities, but not enough patients."

"And why is that," I asked incredulously. "I think people today are a bit wary of doctors who charge too little," said a member. "No I think the doctor we have is not famous enough", said another. All the villagers would rather go to specialists and pay higher fees."

I was beginning to understand why the centre had thought my skills honed in the corporate sector could be useful. Essentially, the centre was suffering from a marketing problem. The task was to increase the cooperative facility's mindshare amongst its members, to aid top of mind recall in times of medical crisis.

I came back wondering: should the centre be known for 24-hour first aid facility or a centre for happening "specialists", or just a good destination for regular GP queries?

Thankfully my stress did not last long. Even as I write this, an NGO is examining granting a fund to the centre to conduct research in its constituency to put an end to this vexing problem.