Amader Haspatal being constructed in Bankura’s Fulberia village. Picture by Gour Sharma

Chhatna, (Bankura), April 20: Five pairs of hands have reached out to a remote rural pocket of Bankura that the healthcare authorities seem to have forgotten about.

Led by P.K. Sarkar, a former director of the School of Tropical Medicine and state drug controller, the team is building a 10-bed hospital in the tribal-dominated Fulberia village, about 270km from Calcutta.

Amader Haspatal (Our Hospital), slated to start operations from May-end, will later be expanded to a 100-bed facility. It will initially have four residential doctors and three nurses.

Sarkar — the 65-year-old is known to villagers as simply daktarbabu — had set up a trust, Foundation for Health Action, to build the hospital. He was joined by Krishnangshu Roy, vice-principal of R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital, S.K. Chatterjee, retired air force employee, S.S. Das Bairagi, accounts officer of Presidency College, and Shakti Bhattacharya, former director of the Institute of English in Calcutta.

The five pooled in their resources and also got some donations to buy 6.5 acres for Rs 2 lakh in 2006, and work began on the Rs 3-crore hospital. The building has been designed by R.L. Munichakraborty, former head of the architecture department at IIT Kharagpur.

P.K.Sarkar

Sarkar said Fulberia has a small government primary health centre about 6km away, which is open between 10am and 1pm. But hardly any doctor bothers to go there.

The villagers have to travel all the way to the Bankura Sammilani Medical College and Hospital, which is 30km away and takes 45 minutes by car or trekker.

“If someone falls sick during daytime, we can take the patient to the medical college by hiring a trekker. But at night, we are helpless,” said Anal Hembram, 35, a daily labourer.

Besides, hiring a trekker costs Rs 400-500, which many of the poor villagers cannot afford. “We have to depend on the local quack or leave the patient to his or her fate,” Hembram said.

Sarkar and his team have also decided to set up a centre to train quacks in treating common ailments like diarrhoea and dysentery and infections in the ear, nose and throat that lead to fever.

“Poor villagers are forced to depend on quacks who prescribe medicines about which they hardly have any idea. As we can’t improve the rural healthcare system overnight, we thought it better to train quacks,” Sarkar said.

Sarkar has been doing most of the running around for the hospital. “There are at least 2,500 of my students across the country and abroad. I will ask them to visit Amader Haspatal to treat patients,” he said.