On an autumn afternoon, a motley group of people file into the courtyard of a decrepit old house in Hatkhola, a neighbourhood in the city’s deep north.
They were hoping for a heart.
In one corner of the courtyard in a small cubbyhole, D. Ashis holds the key. He is the man behind Medical Bank, a unique experiment in community medicine that delivers pacemakers and medicines with equal aplomb to those who can barely afford it.
“Most of them are (here) to collect free medicines, though some are also looking for a heart,” says Ashis, eyes twinkling. “D stands for Datta, my surname, but I have followed the college roll-call system of surname first,” says the man, who goes about by his first name. And that’s not his only break with tradition.
Ashis, born into a family of businessmen, had quite a pampered childhood and cocooned existence. The Medical Bank was not really on the road map, until he chanced upon a slum.
“I was appalled to see people throwing away unused medicines, while in the slums people died because they couldn’t afford medicines,” says Ashis, who was all of 17 when he first noticed life in a slum in North Kolkata.
Cure for the poor: A weekly Medical Bank camp near Bagbazar Yuba Academy in North Kolkata.
To bridge the gap, Ashis and a few of his friends embarked on a drive to collect unused pills and potions from houses in their neighbourhood. That initiative, in 1980, marked the beginning of Medical Bank.
Today, 27 years on, Medical Bank not only takes medicines to those who cannot afford them, but has also extended the model to spectacles and pacemakers, which it collects from those who don’t need them anymore.
“We also have an arrangement with eminent doctors, hospitals and clinics by which patients referred by us get treated either free of cost or at a discounted rate,” says Ashis.
As part of the bank’s pacemaker project, 300 second-hand pacemakers have been implanted in hearts, which would otherwise have stopped beating.
“While a new pacemaker costs Rs30,000-1,00,000 in the market, we have them taken out of bodies lying in hospitals or crematoriums, refitted and sterilized before they are listed in our register,” says Ashis.
The Medical Bank maintains a database of patients who need a pacemaker, but are not in a position to buy one. “When their requirements match the specifications (make, model, weight) of the machines we have, they are handed over to them,” says Ashis.
Before they are handed over, the pacemakers have to be refitted and sterilized. Refitting means replacing the lead wire of a pacemaker, which is cut before taking it out and costs Rs10,000-12,000. Sterilization costs about Rs500.
“Those who can bear this cost do so, otherwise we step in to the extent help is required,” says Ashis. “We do not receive any aid from the government or any organization. Public donations have kept us going, from ambulances to medical equipment, all have been donated.”