Despite economic progress, there is no equitable distribution of healthcare in India. The benefits of modern medical care reach only the rich and the privileged while almost 400 million cannot afford the high cost of such care. Dr Nandini Murali visits the Rural Medicare Centre set up in a suburb of South Delhi, which has well known doctors willing to earn less by performing high ccst surgeries at reasonably low prices.
Photographs: Dr Nandini Murali Archival photos Rural Medicare Centre
” live in lndia but work in Bharat,” quips Dr Devinder Pal Singh Toor. This 55-year-old dapper and dynamic surgeon is also the director of the Rural Medicare Centre (RMC), a 3O-bed not-for-profit hospital in Saidulajab village, a peri-urban area in South Delhi. Dr Toor’s tongue in cheek comment is an oblique reference to healthcare inequities in the medical landscape of the country. The crushing burden of privatised healthcare and out of pocket medical expenditure co-exist in our subcontinent. Resolving this is the driving force behind the medical team at the RMC, as they make inroads into socially relevant and inclusive healthcare. For Dr Toor and his colleagues – Dr SK Basu, eminent obstetrician and gynaecologist and the first doctor to join the RMC, laparoscopic surgeon Dr Medha Vaze, ophthalmologist Dr VK Gopal, and orthopaedic surgeon Dr Sunil Sahi – dealing with the lack of access for socio-economically marginalised people to primary and secondary level healthcare is not about vacuuming their conscience. Rather it has spurred them on a committed mission to enable people to avail “medical expertise with dignity across the counter at an affordable cost”.