Rural Medical Clinics

In India medical treatment has to be paid for, and this means that many poor dalit villagers may not be able to afford medicines or hospital visits when they are ill. Throughout the Diocese of Vellore there are many different church run schemes underway to meet the needs of the poor. Some of these are run by the Women's Fellowship headed by local pastors' wives - for example, in the Chittoor district they organise annual eye camps in the villages where people can be treated for infections or sent on for surgery - many have had their sight saved in this way.

Below are some photographs of church run clinics.

There are a number of clinics associated with the CSI maternity hospital at Vandavasi:

The local pastor, who is also the Administrator for Vandavasi Hospital, has worked hard to get government funding for work with mentally and physically disabled children. In the afternoons the clinic's community workers (left hand photograph) go out into the thirty-five surrounding villages searching out the children in need - at the moment about 270 children have been identified and are being helped. Twenty of the most afflicted children come each day to Vandavasi for physiotherapy and speech therapy. The pastor has managed to get these children government grants and free bus passes to help with their treatment programme.

In the photographs above the young doctor who runs Vandavasi Hospital and two of her senior nurses hold a village clinic one evening. The pregnant women and young mothers they are seeing would not be able to come to the hospital until it was time for their baby to be born. Here the doctor can monitor their progress and the development of their children. This has been set up as a one year project with the support of USPG - the pastor is working hard to find other funding for when the year comes to an end - he is building new shops in the church compound so that the rents can be used to support the clinics.

Just outside Tirrapatur the local pastor organised the building of a small three room block on wasteland belonging to the church. During the day the building is used as a base for a small tailoring project, but every month it opens up as a free eye clinic run voluntarily by Christian doctors. In the first nine months since it opened in 795 patients attended, of whom 136 have gone on to have laser surgery for cataracts. General clinics are also run on some afternoons and 3,200 patients have attended. The doctors manage to get cheap medicines which are sold to the patients at reduced rates - it is important to ask the people to pay something, because if they think the medicine is of no value then they will not bother to take it.