Skip to main content

A culture of scarcity-a culture of intense pain!

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!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

night-hunting.

 Monda suggested  we go  hunting. Dressed up to beat the rains and the unpredictable weather we ventured out at night with the two Dawas. Annie had baked a cake for Rumpanol.It started  pouring in spurts but nothing could beat the enthusiasm.The junior Dawa was to drive us to a place around fifteen kilometres up the north Sikkim highway.We would come across three rivulets of sort where we could possibly find the edible frog.The senior Dawa was already at the spot making a pathway in the jungle for us to proceed. We reached the spot at around eight at night.in the pitch dark one could hear the sound of frogs of all variety and we started seeing quite a few but none of edible variety.We shuffled around in the rain with an umbrella,raincoat and torches like Nancy drew exploring the grasses and having eye contacts with stunned frogs which seemed to have lost the ability to run .The two boys did a Tarzen and was lost in the jungle with a sling bag ,a torch sans any cover from the rain.While

Feet in the water.

  Fifteen days of earned leave after working for two years,I was praying in a house group prayer and worship and pleading with the Lord to show me something ,when it was not forthcoming I surrendered to the Lord and prayed let your will be done and then I saw the Lord walking up a winding road and deep in my spirit I knew He was calling me to follow Him .I did not know where to but I thanked the Lord and said yes. I have been living more in the unseen world than the seen world. Suddenly out of the blue I received a message from Dr Arpit asking me to replace them in Madhipura  for a  fortnight. I needed to go because things were getting a little intense and I needed sometime to step back and mull some things over. I had no idea why the Lord was taking me back to the old world of EHA , mission hospitals and friends from the yore. Travelling to Madhipura , I  continnued to ask the Lord, 'Why this road? I had no idea why I was going  where I was going.I am glad I came because I could r

Thank you.

 After almost five months of struggling with the nitty gritties the dialysis unit opened last week. We were able to dialyse our set of first three patients over the last few days. So much of effort,dissapointments ,struggles,joys and most importantly prayers have gone into the venture.Many who will never see the fruit of their prayers have invested their prayers into it. The day it started with many apprehension I was praying at the early morning hour and put my head on the pillow to rest and then just as I was about to sleep I saw a vision of Jesus on His knees interceding.That is how much my Lord cares for us and this morning while listening to Alistair I realised that He deals with us like a father does a five year old .That is how He sees us. Lord Jesus ,you are the crown on my head and the only thing I can take pride in.