Positive Chronicles - Health care....by the people, for the people, of the people
by Sandeep Pandey
If he was not attending to needy patients in Lucknow today, Manish Kumar would most likely have been a washerman in his birth place, Ballia district of eastern Uttar Pradesh.
Manish with patients at CSMMU
“Even today, there are people plagued with curable diseases in the villages who don’t have access to medical facilities,” rues Manish.
Instead of cursing the darkness however, he believes in lighting a lamp. Today, one can find him at Chhatrapati Sahuji Maharaj Medical Univeristy (CSMMU) at Lucknow, previously known as King George’s Medical College facilitating access of benefits free of cost or at a reasonable cost from the various government hospitals to the poor.
“The poor are very often trapped by touts or burdened by the fees of private pathological laboratories, “ he says and ensures that this does not happen through his timely intervention.
So much so that now, this 27 year old rustic youth enjoys such a reputation among the doctors, residents and students of CSMMU that a number of them also provide financial assistance to him for treatment of underprivileged patients. Not just this, a group, Georgian’s Hope, has been formally formed within CSMMU, which among other things aims to work with Manish to provide support for his work in a more organized fashion.
The journey
Hailing from the ‘dhobi’ caste, which is one of the Scheduled Castes, Manish, as a student of Standard IX in Ballia was not very comfortable going to the homes of his classmates to collect clothes for washing or for delivering them after they were washed. The equality he felt in the class with his classmates seemed to no longer stand when he went to their homes as the son of a washerman and washerwoman. The treatment meted out to him irked him he pledged that he would not continue in the family profession.
However, in spite of many attempts he could not clear the High School examination. It was at this stage that he happened to attend the “Jeevan Vidya” course conducted by Asha at Ballia. This was just the beginning of his association with Asha and he soon became part of their rural centre, Asha Ashram, 60 kms. outside Lucknow in rural Hardoi.
When Pyogenic Meningitis stuck Lakshmi Narayan, his colleague in 2004, it was Manish who brought him back from the jaws of death. Devoting a complete week with him, nursing him and taking him first to Shifa Hospital on the outskirts of Lucknow and then to Medical College in Lucknow, Manish enabled him to get the best medical attention.
And, it was then that he discovered his true calling, becoming a health volunteer with Asha Parivar at Lucknow.
“My dream is to build a hospital for the poor where honest health care will be provided free if possible or at affordable cost,” he says, realizing the huge need for such a facility.
Considering his track record, the day this happens does not seem too far away.
Click here to know more about Asha’s activities, www.ashanet.org [External Link]
September 2008
