In the mid-1980s, Gadchiroli, dubbed the most “backward” place in Maharashtra, appeared to hit a very elusive goal for much of the rest of the country: it had the best record in the state for family planning targets.
In reality, the district was a public health disaster. Statistics that showed a slowing population growth simply masked a grim truth—the district had an exceedingly high child mortality rate.
The Union government now plans to replicate the ‘home-based neonatal care’ model developed by Abhay Bang and his wife
Starkly, more than one in 10 babies born in Gadchiroli would not make it past their first birthdays as a mortality rate of 121 for every 1,000 live births marked this district in south-eastern Maharashtra.
Today, this rate in Gadchiroli has plummeted to less than 30, far below the national average of 58. The credit for this transformation goes to two doctors, Abhay and Rani Bang, who gave up opportunities to pursue lucrative careers after graduating from the prestigious Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Baltimore, and came here instead.
“We believed that children here didn’t have to wait till circumstances improved for them to have a better chance at survival,” says Abhay Bang.
For as long as anyone could remember, the people of Gadchiroli followed rudimentary birthing practices, which partly contributed to the high mortality rates. Soap or disinfectants were never used. A sickle was used to cut the umbilical cord and a paste of mud and oil was applied on the stump. Cold water would be poured on newborns to make them cry. Breastfeeding would be initiated after three days because villagers here believed the initial milk to be impure.Such was the Gadchiroli the Bangs came to in 1986.
In 1950, Dr Abhay was born to parents who believed in the Gandhian welfare movement known as Sarvodaya. “I spent my early childhood in Gandhi’s Sevagram ashram, in the company of luminaries like Acharya Vinoba Bhave,” says Dr Abhay, referring to the man who is considered the spiritual successor of Gandhi. “These influences have shaped me to a large extent.”
One of his earliest defining moments was a conversation with his elder brother Ashok as they cycled through the countryside in Wardha. “We have to decide what we want to do with our lives,” Ashok said.
After a 10-minute discussi-on, the two concluded that the country’s main needs were food and health care—and chose their vocations accordingly. While the older brother went on to study agricultural sciences, Dr Abhay took up medicine. He graduated from Nagpur University and enrolled at the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) at Chandigarh for his medical degree. There, he was agitated to see the government spending significant sums of money to train doctors—only to lose them to the US.