I don't really know if it is the same elsewhere.
The government has influxed a huge amount of money at the hands of the stakeholders and yesterday some of our community health department boys were telling us how people are making money out of the systemn's loop-holes.
There were two ways in particular they described.
The people who do not have the BPL card go up to the sahiyas who find a suitable name with a BPL number in the list and plant it in the coupen as the ante-natal lady's husband and get money out of the systemn and perhaps takes a commission from the patient's family.How did the community health worker come to know about it?One innocent village lady asked if that was one way it could be done because the others were doing it.
There were some other things the CH guys shared which my fading memory seems to have failed to capture.
This ,as opposed to those faithful DOTS providers the team nurtured in the villages of Satbarwa!Simple village folks,altruistic at a cost-bringing in patients faithfully from the village, sometimes paying the transport fee themselves,following up the patients for six months,without the renumeration from the government.Faithfully doing their work,making everyone wonder how it worked!I remember Arun from TB Alert expressing his wonder at the commitment of these simple,poor village folks.
When Nirmal Bhuiya ,one of those faithfuls was asked what drove him to do it,he replied that his child had been cured of TB after having had DOTS faithfully,he had volunteered to become a DOTS provider and eversince he had taken up this responsibility of giving DOTS,the lord had blessed him,he had become a leader of sorts in the village....he had also been entrusted with other responsibilities ...it spoke somewhere of increased self esteem...somewhere of the so-called term...'empowerment'!
It was a culture that truly inspired a lot of us who had the privellage to work with these individuals where God seems so near!
The government has influxed a huge amount of money at the hands of the stakeholders and yesterday some of our community health department boys were telling us how people are making money out of the systemn's loop-holes.
There were two ways in particular they described.
The people who do not have the BPL card go up to the sahiyas who find a suitable name with a BPL number in the list and plant it in the coupen as the ante-natal lady's husband and get money out of the systemn and perhaps takes a commission from the patient's family.How did the community health worker come to know about it?One innocent village lady asked if that was one way it could be done because the others were doing it.
There were some other things the CH guys shared which my fading memory seems to have failed to capture.
This ,as opposed to those faithful DOTS providers the team nurtured in the villages of Satbarwa!Simple village folks,altruistic at a cost-bringing in patients faithfully from the village, sometimes paying the transport fee themselves,following up the patients for six months,without the renumeration from the government.Faithfully doing their work,making everyone wonder how it worked!I remember Arun from TB Alert expressing his wonder at the commitment of these simple,poor village folks.
When Nirmal Bhuiya ,one of those faithfuls was asked what drove him to do it,he replied that his child had been cured of TB after having had DOTS faithfully,he had volunteered to become a DOTS provider and eversince he had taken up this responsibility of giving DOTS,the lord had blessed him,he had become a leader of sorts in the village....he had also been entrusted with other responsibilities ...it spoke somewhere of increased self esteem...somewhere of the so-called term...'empowerment'!
It was a culture that truly inspired a lot of us who had the privellage to work with these individuals where God seems so near!
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