PHC - Surprising Turnaround!

Project Kandwar/The XVIII Horse update:

We were to go and meet Dr. Chandrashekar at Chikballapur to discuss on the solution for the PHC at Kandavara. Doc set the appointment with him on 8th November and we all decided to meet him at his residence. As planned, I reached our NGO office on 7th evening after my regular work and Doc also came there. TS had the duty on 8th so he said he cannot join us. Also Doc wanted to come back by 11.30 and handover the car to his brother. So the plan was to leave our office at 8 am in the morning and come back by 11.30 am.

It was a sunny and bright day. Doc, Narasim and I left our NGO apartment at 8.15 am and reached the Swati hotel on NH7 to have the breakfast. After having breakfast we left the hotel and started towards Chikballapur. All the way, we were discussing about the potential solution for the PHC and how Doc can contribute towards the same. Doc expressed the difficulties in getting a doctor to the PHC as he had already tried to talk to many General Physicians about the same.

The problem we were trying to fix is the PHC in Kandavara is just a building which is not being used. Since 17 years there is no doctor appointed to the same and for all the treatments, villagers should go to the Chikballapur city even though they have a PHC building in the village. As per the public meeting we had conducted, this is the extremely needed service for the village. We tried to meet the DC and the officials in the State to get the problem fixed. But we had no luck with the same till this year.

Dr. Chandrashekar is a retired Ophthalmologist from ESI hospital in Bangalore. As per Narasim’s meeting with him last year, he was supposed to help us to bring in a group of doctors into our network who can help us with giving life to the PHC. As committed, he tried talking to several doctors who work in Chikballapur about our project and the PHC requirement. It seems as though none of the doctor showed interest in the same and Dr Chandrashekar had given up on the issue. So the agenda of our meeting was to resume the communication with him and understand the alternatives available with us towards the goal.

Narasim has very good memory as he had not forgotten Dr.Chandrashekar’s residence. We reached his place by 10.20 am. Doctor was in his farm land and came down as soon as we called him on his mobile phone. As always, we first got the coffee as a welcome drink before we started the discussion. Chandrashekar was explaining us on his retirement from the ESI Hospital Bangalore and how he is spending his time post his retirement. We brought up the topic of the PHC and he was expressing his difficulty in bringing the doctors together to work with us for our project.

Surprising turnaround!
All of a sudden he gave us very shocking and surprising news. He asked us whether we went to Kandavara before meeting him and we said we are yet to visit Kandavara. The surprising news he gave us was the following: “Government of Karnataka has demolished the PHC building in Kandavara and they are building up a 2 storied building to set up a Nursing institute. Ground floor will be the hospital and the 1st floor will be the Nursing training institute.”

Wow! Was our reaction and all these days we were not even aware of this and we were delighted out of our belief to hear this news from him!

Finally we thanked Chandrashekar for the good news and said good bye to him and visited Kandavara. We saw the new pillars coming up and enquired from the supervisor / contractor who was working at the site who said this building will be up and ready to use in the next one year!

Well… we are not sure how and who moved this file which was pending since a long period of time. We were out of our belief to see this outstanding development. Whoever did move this file in the government, he is the hero for people of Kandavara.

All our efforts till now for the PHC came to a productive end and a new beginning!

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