Floating clinics caters to 3000 river islands

Be it rains, dry winters or humid summers, a band of people in white coats on a boat travel the mighty Brahmaputra River in Assam aboard the floating clinics. This exercise is part of an innovative health campaign by the Center for North East Studies and Policy Research (C-NES) under Sanjoy Hazarika. On Monday, Hazarika spoke of his centre’s journey and how an innovation of floating clinics touches lives of lakhs of people in the movie ‘Where There Are No Roads” The floating clinics are equipped with basic medical facilities, nurses and doctors. They take healthcare to people in far-flung 3,000 small river islands. Speaking about the germination of the idea, Hazarika recalled an incident which took him to create the floating clinics over ten years back. He said, “I was traveling through the Brahmaputra river for a documentary when I heard a young mother passed away because she couldn’t get to the hospital on time. I then set thinking ‘what if the hospital comes to the people?” Thus he started a journey with one district, one boat and three-four people who would visit these villages to cure people. The movement, ten years later, has reached over 13 districts with over 250 people. He spoke about the steps he and C-NES took to make the boat clinics a success. “We make sure that Our staff is paid better than the in-land doctors,” Hazarika said. Pankti Jog, of Janpath was an interesting insight into the management of the boat clinics, from which we can learn and apply at state level here in Gujarat where many worker communities have negligible health-care”