Surul is a village in Bolpur subdivision of Birbhum district of West Bengal. The village consists of a large population of Bagdis, Bauris, Haris, Doms as well as weavers. It is strange to note that, the people in the village are oblivious of the existing health care facilities. For primary health care they have to travel to Bolpur, Sian Hospital or Prantik, Vishwa Bharti, which is around 20-30 minutes away from their dwelling houses. Also, for the treatment of any major ailment, they have to visit either Burdwan or Kolkata. However, the general service provided in the village is satisfactory, there are complaints on the availibility of good qualified doctors and proper transport for the patient in the case of emergency. The area also has alcohol and cardiac problems in general. Regardless of the fact, Gastroenterologists, Orthopaedic, Gynaecologists are not adequately available. In addition to all, people are also not aware of the Life/Health Insurances and RSBYs provided to them by our government.
It is against this background of the innumerable villages in India, that Ikure is formulated in order to bridge the urban-rural disparity in Indian health care. Ikure aims to create a comprehensive solution that can deliver effective health care at the grassroot. The company has established Rural Health Care Centres (RCHs) that are armed with MBBS doctors, pharmacists dispensing only accredited medicines and health care officers recording data of all activity centres.
Recently, we organised a camp in collaboration with the Surul Foundation on 24th of February, 2013, aiming at free health check up of people residing in the village. There were 3 separate sections of which check up was done -
• Eye
• Cardiac
• General
People who attended the health camp belonged mainly from average to lower middle class section, along with mazimum number of people below the poverty level (oblivious of the BPL card). Most of them din't know about the facilities provided in the camp. Despite of the fact, the total number of respondents were close to 300 patients. Eye and General check up attracted most of the patients.
After being informed about the facilities provided by the camp,the people seemed quite convinced. Social Volunteers working with our team helped them to get acquainted with the services being provided to them within a nominal fee of Rs. 80.
Health has become an alarming issue in todays world. Hence,if we have more availability of doctors with proper qualification and amiable behaviour, availibility of blood bank, computerised eye check up,inclusion of appropriate people in BPL category, awareness of insurance and facilities of controlling epodemics- malaria, chicken pox in all the villages, we can prevent many of our fellow mates falling prey to the unavailibility of informative resources and quality healtcare facilities at affordable cost.