Ravi Dhaliwal

Tribune News Service

Gurdaspur, July 18

In a novel initiative, and what is being called the first of its kind in the state, Gurdaspur Deputy Commissioner Mohammad Ishfaq has asked government doctors to set up medical clinics in slum areas of Gurdaspur and Batala once a week to ensure “hospitals should move to the doorstep of the poor and not otherwise”.

The DC has ordered the District Red Cross Society to supervise these clinics where the downtrodden are given free medicines. Officials claim this is the first such initiative in Punjab where doctors will treat slum dwellers by personally visiting them.

Ishfaq has formed a committee, headed by Dr Satnam Singh Nijjar, which is working out the expansion plans for these clinics.

For the past three years, frail-looking Savita Kumari, a 78-year-old rag picker, could not afford the expenses of visiting the hospital to get a skin problem treated. Patches on her arms would cause torturous pain. Her husband, a rickshaw puller, used to curse his fate as he did not have enough money to take his wife to the Batala Civil Hospital. Last Saturday, a team of doctors visited the Loha Mandi slum, studied her test reports and cured her. “90 per cent of my pain is relieved now. Whatever remains will be dealt with by doctors at the next camp,” she says.

Apart from Dr Nijjar, the doctors’ team comprises a laboratory technician, a gynaecologist, a pharmacist, a paediatrician and a medical officer. The lab technician takes blood samples to the Civil Hospital lab where tests are done on for free. If the lab is closed, like it happened last Saturday when doctors were on strike, the tests are done at private labs. “During the ongoing doctors’ strike, we asked private doctors to fill the gap, which they did without any objection,” said Rajiv Singh, secretary, Gurdaspur Red Cross Society.

Dr Nijjar said: “We have elaborate expansion plans where we will cover more slum areas. Batala’s Loha Mandi and Shiva resort slum areas in Gurdaspur are just pilot projects. Let the poor not visit the hospital, let the hospital visit the poor.”