Ex-IAS officer makes healthcare affordable

former IAS

IAS officer-turned-entrepreneur plans to open 50 more hospitals

A former IAS officer and a doctor in West Bengal has undertaken an initiative to make healthcare accessible and affordable, looking to help more than 70 per cent of India's population living in the villages.

A sample government hospital in Bengal normally has filthy corridors, cramped wards and patients heaped like cattle. But Dr Azim believed that this could change. The former IAS officer set up Glocal, which has made healthcare accessible and affordable to more than 70 per cent of India's rural population. Dr Azim, the CEO of Glocal Healthcare Systems Private Ltd, said, "Today the nation itself is changing, no one is telling us to do these things , there is no 'punya or pap' or showing that we are beautiful people. We are doing it because we have a sense of self because the new India and the younger generation no longer has that lack of confidence."
It all started from the remote corner of Sonamukhi in Bengal's Bankura district. With the nearest hospital being 45 kilometres away, a team of 13 doctors and 18 nurses ensures that the hospital caters to at least 200 patients everyday, including BPL families. Glocal proves that it is possible to get bright minds to work in the villages. A visiting faculty at the Newcastle University in Australia, Mumbai-based Dr Sanjeev Kelkar and his wife, are spending their days at Bankura to work for what they believe in. "In this concept, we found an exact match of the many solutions that should be implemented in rural India for its problems in healtcare. You see in rural India, there are three problems, access, affordability and quality," Dr Kelkar said. "We have worked for the initial 11 years of our life in villages as charity and the same ideology has come up with a very good set up and everything here," Dr Kelkar's wife said. But for Dr Azim and his team, this is only the beginning. Profit is not a crime only if it is implemented for sustainable development - This mantra is used by these entrepreneurs scripting change in villages.