Click to play videoNalgonda (Andhra Pradesh): In the early of the morning in Valigonda, a small village near Hyderabad, a team of doctors and paramedical staff is setting up a mobile medical camp.
This is a part of the Andhra government's initiative to provide medical help to families below poverty line under the Rajiv Gandhi Health Mission.
Principal Secretary Health & Family Welfare, P K Agarwal says, "We wanted to enable the poorest people to have access to the best of technology and the best of treatment."
It's not so easy to convince people to give up grandmother's remedies for a more scientific line of treatment, but the government is trying hard to create awareness by organising small educational skits.
The trick seems to be working. One such patient, Laxmi Narayan Gaud recently underwent a heart surgery, something he could have never afforded on his own.
"Private hospitals said that the operation would cost me Rs 2 lakh so I did not get it done and just took medicines. Now the government has got the operation done for me," says he.
The response of villagers for the scheme is quite encouraging, but critics say that hospitals are capitalising on the scheme by prematurely referring them to surgery and getting money from the insurance companies.
Nonetheless, the numbers are encouraging. There are 1,400 camps, 13,000 surgeries, all at a cost of Rs 45 crore — a small cost for the state to bear , but the difference between life and death for villagers.
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