Anand 
As the world moves towards industry revolution 4.0. The continuous development in technology and understanding of the human body has helped increase the life expectancy of people by a lot in the last century. The effect of these advancements is often limited to urban and semi-urban areas.
A large part of India still resides in the countryside connected to modern India by Kaccha and at times unfinished roads. Today, a significant part of Chattisgarh resides in its villages and forests (tribes), which are not easily accessible. Owing to which, proper medical facilities are not available. Based on what we heard, most of the Government Primary Health centres are inadequate to provide all facilities, and thus to some extent are of limited use.
Nobody wants to work in rural India, even with a bumped-up pay. And that is a matter of great concern.
Medical facilities in rural India are substantially less equipped, and at times people have to suffer because of diseases that are easily curable: due to lack of awareness and access to healthcare facilities.
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Nevertheless, some people have taken the matter in their hands, and we see a speck of light in these rather dark times : Jan Swasthya Sahyog: People’s Health Support Group is located in Ganiyari.
Ganiyari is a village in the Bilaspur District of Chhattisgarh. Our (as part of my Project) pursuit to making medical diagnosis available to all and democratising the right to know about your own body’s condition took us to the streets of Ganiyari, to explore something incredible in Credible Chhattisgarh
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Started by a bunch of talented and socially aware individuals from the best Medical Institutes of the country. It is a place that provides quality healthcare facilities at an affordable price to rural Bilaspur. We came into contact with a doctor who is a full time practitioner there as part of our project through the TATA trust. We reached out to him to showcase our work, take feedback and find synergies in how we could help JSS in their pursuit to give back to the community in need.
The Place
It was about a 3 hour Journey from Raipur, the capital of Chhattisgarh. We started our trip at around 8:30AM in the morning (I picked up my friend Priyanjit from his Apartment, so the trip really started at 9:00AM ;D), it was a long trip through the countryside of Chhattisgarh. I hadn’t slept properly the previous night. (In fact I was watching a TV series the previous night (The Boys on Amazon Prime ) after finishing up work.) So I slept through some parts of the road trip.
The part of the road trip I was awake was pretty good: good road and all, but as I was told by my friend, the later part of the trip involved under-construction roads through which I had slept blissfully through a fairly rough terrain. I eventually experienced it while we were returning to Raipur in the evening. It’s a positive sign that Good Roads are being built in Chattisgarh to connect its cities to the countryside.
It was around 12:00PM when we reached the place, JSS [Jan Swasthya Sahyog] was fairly easy to find using Maps and surprisingly the telecom reception was very good. I woke up when we were approaching the gate of the facility, it looked like a rather interesting villa-cum-hotel-cum-community centre. At that moment, I knew that I was going to experience something truly amazing today.
Jan Swasthya Sahyog
You know the feeling when you look at something and think you are going to be blown away by it’s awesomeness- JSS is one such place: Quality medical services at a cheap rate.
Let’s break down the experience into parts:
How it looked and felt?
When I entered the place, I was a bit overwhelmed: it was a hospital that wasn’t giving me vibes of a hospital. People were moving around a lot, it was all busy. Once we entered the premises we had to wait for some time to meet the doctor who had invited us.
The Doctor
He was really interesting, he came to us from the building that you can see above in a completely green attire. I had done a bit of background search on the doctor and believe me, he was pretty well educated, that too from the USA and was working here cause he wanted to make a difference.
In our conversation at a later point, he told us that he had initially worked in JSS on and off for 5 years and then completely shifted here 8 years ago. The amount of respect the people were giving him was touching and at the same time felt empowering to me.
Bespoke Infrastructure
You see, the place is for people from the village. There were only a few written instructions on the notice boards, instead a majority of them were pictorial. Thus ensuring even a person without much formal education could navigate through the premises and understands the important instructions.
The place is custom built for the people it serves. With less number of doctors and a huge number of patients it is very challenging for JSS to manage the workload. Due to this, emergency cases are dealt with immediately, while other people who do not need urgent attention have to wait for their turn after they are registered with JSS.
The Operations
Many times a person may have to wait for a day or two to be examined by a doctor. The doctor we went to meet told us that they gave a huge emphasis on quality and thorough checkup which might take more time per individual but was very effective. You may wonder how will a person wait here for such long periods in a line? Well the answer is rather simple and intuitive: they just kept a piece of what they carried as a representation of themselves to save a spot in the line as shown below:
JSS is well equipped with sanitary facilities in case nature calls you while you are waiting. JSS strives to tick all the boxes to provide facilities that the people in Ganiyari should have access to.
These are just a few things I experienced on spending a day in this amazing place. But it does give me a hope that people in their own capacities can make a significant difference in the community if they wish to do so.
It’s time to let go!
The work related conversations were done and we did understand the challenges faced by people here. The doctors and lab technicians were impressed with our work but we believe that there is a lot that can be done.
I salute these bright individuals who work in these areas without expecting much in return. They selflessly serve the ones neglected and deprived of medical facilities.
Though it’s time to leave JSS , but I will be back with more soon.
[Interestingly, the women 3rd from the left in the picture above was from Brazil, doing her internship in JSS]
Personal note
People in the world have to suffer from a number of diseases that are very much curable if proper health facilities are made available to them. Ganiyari is a lucky village to have JSS but there are many places which are not fortunate enough. As individuals who are comparatively well off and educated should do their bit to make a difference. I do it by Building Technology.
I urge you to do your bit to make a small difference as every effort counts.
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