( From top) A view of the hospital and research centre in Tinsukia; the ICCU at the centre; Panchanan Sahoo, visiting consultant cardiologist from Calcutta, examines a patient at the centre and people attend a free health check-up camp at the centre. Pictures by Ripunjoy Das

Case I

Patient: Satyajit Phukan

Age: 17 years

Occupation: Student

Suffering from acute heart disease

A. Raghuvanshi, consultant cardiac surgeon of Rabindranath Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences (RTIICS), Calcutta advises open heart surgery. The son of a PWD muster roll worker, Satyajit needs money so as to undergo the operation in order to live. He approaches the R.C. Agarwal Memorial Hospital and Research Centre — RCAMH&RC, Tinsukia — a unit of the Asia Heart Foundation (AHF), which arranges for the operation at Calcutta at a very subsidised rate.

Case II

Patient: Ratna Nag

Age: 30 years

Occupation: Housewife

Suffering from a heart ailment similar to Satyajit’s

A housewife belonging to a lower middle class family in Tinsukia, Nag was depressed to learn that she would require nearly Rs 2 lakh to cure herself. Once again, the AHF came to her rescue. She could get the surgery done for only Rs 68,000. Now she is leading a normal life.

“Our prime objective is to provide quality healthcare at a very nominal cost,” says RCAMH&RC administrator Aktarul Munim at his office in the hospital. Established on August 1, 2002, the hospital had already conducted six free heart check-up camps in its premises in which nearly a thousand patients were attended to and 782 ECGs done free of cost.

“We are happy that apart from various parts of Upper Assam, people from Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh had also come in for treatment,” Munim says.

The hospital, which had given subsidies to the needy to the tune of over Rs 1 lakh since its inception, now plans to build a 100-bed multispeciality hospital, work on which is expected to resume from January 2004.

Located on Makum Road in Tinsukia district — along National Highway 37 — the basic idea to open a unit of the Asia Heart Foundation here was to relieve the people of this remote part of the country the hassle of going to distant parts for cardiac treatment.

The RCAMH&RC at present has a super-speciality outpatient department, which has facilities like echo-cardiography, electrocardiography, computer-linked treadmill test, X-ray, biochemistry and a six-bed intensive coronary care unit (ICCU) that provides round-the-clock monitoring of patients with state-of-the-art monitors, equipped with defibrillator and provisions for temporary pacing and 24-hour oxygen supply. It is manned by experienced specialists from the Rabindranath Tagore International Institute of Cardiac Sciences, Calcutta and Narayana Hridayalaya in Bangalore.

The Asia Heart Foundation (AHF) is a non-profit organisation with a dedicated team of professionals led by Devi Shetty and Alok Roy. Their mission is to provide quality healthcare to the common man at his doorstep through a network of healthcare facilities in India and other countries. In the past five years, the AHF has commissioned over four super-speciality and three general hospitals, more than 10 coronary care units and performed over 18,000 major heart surgeries.

“The AHF strongly believes in teamwork, both within the organisation and outside. That is why the AHF has tied up with various governments and organisations across the continent in its efforts to provide critical health services to the people who have been denied these owing to various socio-economic and geographical reasons,” Munim says.

West Bengal, Karnataka, Tripura and the Arabic country of Yemen are a few places where the AHF has set up a series of intensive care units (ICUs) and cardiac centres in remote areas with the collaboration of local governments. By tying up with various governments of different countries, the AHF is looking forward to working towards consolidation of the existing infrastructure for improving the quality of health service delivery, accessibility to health infrastructure, increasing health consciousness and improving literacy rates.

Having established itself as one of the leading heart care providers for the masses, the AHF is now working towards equity of access to all levels of healthcare facilities and securing a prominent place for health in the overall development framework of our country. In tune with its mission, “an equitable distribution of healthcare for all”, the hospitals under the AHF umbrella function on a no-profit no-loss basis and solely believe in financial viability and economics of scale to make their mission come true.

It is this philosophy of the AHF that has been a trendsetter and has not only resulted in drastic reductions in the cost of cardiac services in this part of the country but has also become the benchmark as far as cardiac related services are concerned.

In order to reach out and treat emergency heart patients in remote parts of the country, the AHF created a division of telemedicine, predominantly offering telecardiology services. With its telecardiology services, the AHF has been able to reach out to people in remote and distant locations in the country and actually helped them to smilingly tide over their “heartaches”. This set-up has made it possible for the people staying in the remote districts of West Bengal like Bankura and Siliguri, Udaipur in Tripura and in Tinsukia in Assam to seek medical care and opinion provided by doctors of RTIICOS in Calcutta with the help of satellite links. This is a unique set-up that brings “cardiac care to the patient” rather than take the patient to the cardiac hospitals.

The RCAMH&RC had also chalked out economic packages for comprehensive heart check-ups. “For a person who volunteers for a check-up, we charge only Rs 12. This is nearly Rs 25 in other places. For couples, we have further subsidised it at Rs 18,” the administrator says.

The response has also been overwhelming. In the past couple of months, over 500 people have come in for comprehensive heart check-ups, he says.

However, even if the RCAMH&RC has all the required infrastructure with a good staff strength of nearly 30, it needs more activation and publicity, particularly in the remote areas, “so that the facilities available are utilised to their best”.

But for the well-behaved and well-trained staff of the hospital, it has been only a beginning. “There are more plans for reaching out to the people and we are going to procure a van soon exclusively for the purpose,” Munim says, adding, “after all you need to have plans to turn into action”.

He is just echoing the hospital’s mission statement: “You cannot realise a dream unless you have one to begin with....”