I remember hearing my parents talk between themselves, when I fell ill during my childhood, that ‘There is no mission hospital close by to go to’. They both had vivid memories of going to the Thiruvella Medical Mission hospital in central Kerala, to which they went whenever they or their parents had any health need. That hospital was their first port of call for all their medical needs. They spoke highly of the care and conveniences the hospital offered. Since my parents relocated in North Kerala, they did not have access to that hospital during my childhood.
As a medical student, I had acquaintances with Achalpur Mission Hospital, where Dr. Howard Searle spent several years; Paddar Mission Hospital where Dr. Victor Choudharie spent his life time of service and the Christian Fellowship Hospital, Oddanchatram, where its co-founder Dr A.K.Tharien spent his life time, developing health care facilities for the rural community. Anna and I worked for a while at the Christian Fellowship hospital and N.M.Wadia hospital, Pune, in the late nineteen seventies after our graduation, which gave us an opportunity to get to know why a mission hospital is the spontaneous first choice of many, when they have health care needs.
I was on a phone call the other day with Dr Sedevi Angami of the Christian Institute of Health Sciences and Research (CIHSR), Dimapur. He told me the several COVID 19 awareness programme the hospital staff was engaged in, in the community and hospital. The fear and anxiety about contracting the corona infection was high in the community that they even stopped coming to the hospital for their regular health care needs. The awareness campaign by visiting homes, church groups, restaurants, public places, village gatherings, etc. by the hospital staff helped in building confidence in the community to return to the hospital for their health care needs. Now, although the hospital is offering care for the COVID 19 patients in the same campus, the regular patients have resumed coming to the hospital. They now know of the care and attention with which the hospital has prepared itself to contain the spread of the COVID infection. Even the government of the Nagaland has adopted the protocol of care advocated by the CIHSR for prevention and treatment of COVID 19 infection. I followed up this conversation by talking to a friend, to get a feel of the role of CIHSR in Dimapur and near-by places. His response was that, ‘People feel secure and confident when they come to CIHSR. Many travel long distance even from the adjacent north eastern states to reach the hospital’. His reason for this was that, people have come to believe that the hospital practices medicine ‘honestly, ethically and altruistically’.
During a recent conversation with Dr Ravi George of the Asha Kiran Hospital, Lamptaput, which welcomes patients from the tribal belt, he shared a fascinating story. As early as in March, when the news of the possibility of COVID 19 outbreak reached the hospital, the hospital team decided to convert the training centre, which is a stand-alone building away from the main hospital, to welcome and admit the COVID 19 patients as and when needed. This involved financial outlay, which for a hospital that normally needs external support for the maintenance of the hospital looked too ambitious to attempt. The training centre needed partition, staff needed protective kit, the ward needed extra beds and patients needed subsidised or free medical care. That was when, Dr Johny Oommen of Bisamcuttack mission Hospital offered to share their resources to help them to get it started. He introduced them to a donor, who was looking for genuine hospitals wanting to upgrade their capacity for the care of the COVID 19 patients. The donor having examined their financial statements and satisfied by the mission of the hospital, offered a generous grant to make all the provisions needed to run a COVID 19 in-patient service. Although the patients from the tribal community, who normally access the hospital by using the public transport or jeeps, could not come since the transport system was non-functional following the national lockdown, the hospital was reaching out to them through the wayside clinics and home visits. It is yet another story of trust. Even a new donor trusted a mission hospital unconditionally, to fund its project! The tribal community has confidence in the hospital, because they are familiar with the child care centres, literacy programmes, village health centres, women’s support initiatives, etc the hospital runs for the last 25 years now.
I was keen to know how the community around the Duncan Hospital, Raxaul, responded since the outbreak of the pandemic in that region. I got in touch with Dr Santhosh Mathew, who until recently was located at the Duncan hospital. He shared with me the efforts of the hospital to prevent the staff from getting infected and prepare a protocol of practice to offer affordable and effective care for the COVID 19 patients from the local community. The Nepal-Bihar border having been closed following the national lock down, the hospital anticipated the local community to approach the hospital for regular health needs, which meant that they needed a separate facility for the patients of COVD 19. The hospital took a proactive step well in advance that they would remain available to the local community. Seeing the abundant caution that the hospital was taking not to mix the regular patients and the COVID 19 patients, the local community, after a short while of staying away from the hospital, returned trusting the hospital in its intent to follow good practices. The Orthopaedic surgeon and the Managing Director of the hospital, Dr Prabhu Joseph seems to have mentioned to Dr Santhosh, that he had a heavy load of operations to do, apart from the accident and trauma surgery he was normally doing, during this period. This benefitted the hospital as the drop in the income at the hospital could be compensated for through the regular services provided to the local community. The local patients did not get ostracised because the Duncan Hospital was looking after the COVID 19 patients. Instead they came to trust the hospital for their concern to protect them from COVID 19 while visiting the hospital. Dr Santhosh attributed these changes on account of the habit of prayer of the staff and the cordial consultation and collaboration between the staff to evolve a Duncan model of COVID 19 care for Bihar.
I was keen to get an overview of the way the community responded to the initiatives of a mission hospital located in a south Indian city. The telephonic interview with Dr Naveen Thomas of the Bangalore Baptist Hospital, gave me some significant impressions about the high level of trust the local community has bestowed on the Bangalore Baptist Hospital. The hospital was in a dilemma as to how they would manage the regular work load, when the government took away 50 percent of their beds for the care of the COVID 19 patients. This meant that the local patients ‘feared’ to come for their regular health needs to a ‘COVID hospital’. This led to a drop in the number of patients visiting the hospital and the income. The increase in the salary for the staff, promised for April had to be kept in abeyance. Even the regular salary could not be paid in full to which the staff responded in a magnanimous way. Since all the steps to contain the infection from spreading beyond the COVID care area was made known widely, the patients for regular health care started to return. Dr Naveen talked about the team spirit he observed during this difficult time and commented his colleagues for their steadfast efforts to run a COVID service without disturbing the regular health care services too much. The local community knew the Baptist Hospital as their ‘friend’ at all times. A young consultant working in the hospital for a year, having observed the trust many patients have in the hospital told me, that ‘The patients come to the hospital believing that, they have no other better place to go to’.
The trust quotient is high among people who come to a mission hospital. This has been for fifty or seventy five years or more and continues to be so even now. The mission hospitals function across many geographical areas, both in the rural and urban areas. Wherever they are located, the community around a hospital finds it as a safe place to go to for their health care.
Late Dr K. N. Nambudiripad, a former director of the Christian Medical College, Ludhiana and a neurosurgeon of repute used to say that the ‘X’ factors which endear people to a mission hospital are, ‘competency, communication and compassion’. I believe that the human resources in the mission hospitals are of high calibre. The professionals in the mission hospitals take considerable effort to listen to patients and share with them the details of procedures, out of due respect to their autonomy. I have some personal experiences of the hospital staff going out of their way to make patients and relatives feel comfortable by consoling them and offering practical help.
While talking to Dr Christopher Moses of Jalna Mission Hospital, I discovered another dimension of this trust quotient which people repose in the mission hospitals. The local community gathered together to help the hospital, having seen the efforts of the hospital to create a separate ward for the CVOVID 19 patients. A generous gift was given by the local community to the hospital to subsidize the cost of care of those, who were financially burdened. Even Dr Moses was surprised by this. He had not known that there was so much goodwill towards the hospital from the local community! The local community was perceptive of the fact that although Dr Christopher and his wife Dr Shobha, are older in age, they ignore the risk they carry and are in the forefront, giving leadership to the team in the hospital. The hospital is able to do the COVID testing in the hospital itself, which has enhanced people’s opinion about the hospital’s resolve to provide the best service for the local community.
The mission hospitals have earned the trust of the people whom they serve, because the hospital staff live and exercise their mission of, ‘not to be ministered unto but to minister’ spontaneously and cheerfully.
M.C.Mathew(text and photo)
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