Healthcare
Dismal Healthcare for the Poor
Public sector spending on healthcare in India is around 1% of GDP (compared to 8.7% in South Africa), so a whopping 17% of the population (compared to 0.6% in South Africa) spends more than 25% of their income on healthcare. The public hospitals, with a meager budget, are a dismal place with overcrowding, unclean environment, shortage of medicines, and inadequate trained staff. As a result, the poor who cannot afford private facilities simply suffer and die prematurely.
As an illustration, child immunization rate in India is among the lowest in the world. Except for BCG vaccine, the immunization rates are lower than in sub-Saharan Africa. In contrast, Bangladesh, with a much lower GDP per person, has achieved a 95 percent immunization for all the vaccines.
In Calcutta Rescue, we offer medical services and medicines to the poor slum dwellers. Besides educating them on preventive health measures, we provide child immunizations, treatments of common diseases, as well as more expensive treatments of tuberculosis, HIV and leprosy. Unfortunately, leprosy is a treatable disease and while most of the world has been able to eradicate leprosy, and reduce the cases of TB, both of these contagious diseases are still prevalent in India, and India has the third highest number of HIV cases.
We provide these services in four clinics in north Kolkata and two Mobile Clinics. The Mobile Clinics are fully equipped and staffed and are taken to poverty-stricken places in and around Kolkata. In addition, there is a TB clinic, and special arrangements for leprosy patients. These clinics and the pharmacy are staffed by qualified doctors, nurses and pharmacists, many of whom are local and international volunteers.
Calcutta Rescue has four fixed clinics in north Kolkata and two mobile clinics serving 25 slum communities across the city:
Tala Park is CR’s biggest clinic and the heart of its medical operations. Most of its patients have chronic illnesses such as asthma and diabetes, or require expensive drug therapy for cancer, heart disease and HIV.
The clinic also provides speech therapy, physiotherapy, counselling and support for children with disabilities.
Every patient also attends a health education session on a wide range of topics each time they visit
Situated in an area of great poverty, this small clinic has a reputation for providing outstanding wound-care to its patients, many of whom are destitute or live in tiny shacks along the adjacent railway line.
It treats a wide range of conditions and also provides physiotherapy.
The number of patients who have the active disease is small, and the vast majority of patients come for ongoing treatment to parts of their bodies permanently damaged by the disease before they were cured.
This clinic has an excellent track record of curing people suffering from multi-drug-resistant TB.
This can take many months and involved watching patients take their drugs each day – a system called DOTS (Directly Observed Treatment, Short-course).
Calcutta Rescue operates two mobile street medicine teams who go out into carefully selected slums each day to provide primary care, immunisations, health education and other support in areas where such services are hard to access.
Calcutta Rescue has its own pharmacy which ensures all its clinics have continuous access to the medicines their patients need.
It also negotiates the best prices when buying drugs in bulk.