A primary health camp project was started on 29th October 2006 at Koabati village in Mathurapur Block 2, South 24 parganas, West Bengal. The project aims to address the two aspects - curative and preventive - of primary health care. The curative aspect consists of providing a primary health check-up by a doctor every week. Patients are charged Rs 20 which includes the costs for consultancy as well as the medicines they are getting. The cost for medicines is sustained by trying to rely more on preventive measures rather than medicinal cures, and by using less-expensive (but equivalent, as certified by our doctors) varieties of drugs from the market. A paid female attendant has been hired to assist the doctor and the visiting paitients. She will also maintain a health database of the visiting patients. And for the rest of the week she will follow up with the paitients and update the database accordingly. The preventive part includes starting various awareness programs among the villagers on a variety of topics like pre- and post- natal care, safe sex, and prevention of common contagious diseases.

29th October was the first day of the health check-up clinic. We reached Mathurapur and arrived at the village of Koabati at around 11:00 am. We found that the villagers assisted by the Samaj Unnayan Kendra members had erected a nice room out of bamboo and mud for the health camp - and that too had been done on very short notice (nearly one week). The logistics - chairs, table, bed, medicines etc had also been arranged by the Samaj Unnayan Kendra staff. They had put in a huge effort to convince the villagers that such a camp would really take place. They had also informed the local panchayat heads, the Block Medical Officer of Health for Mathurapur Block 2, Dr Latif, and others of this entire project and had requested them to be present on the first day.

Shyamali, the attendant there, was also busy in organising things at the camp. Our doctor, Dr Anupam Banerjee arrived from Kolkata at the camp site around 11:30am. He quickly coordinated with Shyamali and got everything ready. Shyamali was told of the various terms used in medical prescriptions, and what medicines they referred to. The doctor also suggested two replacements in the list of medicines collected by SUK. Within an hour, the camp was started. In all, 15 patients came on the first day. All of them were from Koabati i.e., where the camp is situated. There was one particular case where a 15-year-old girl came with her mother - she was nearly in her 6th month of pregnancy. But she hadn't attended any of the health checkups at the nearest ICDS center, as that is at one and a half hours' distance from the village. She was found to be anaemic, and completely unaware of the process of pregnancy and proper care and diet required in the ante-natal period.

Dr Latif, and Anjalidi - a member of the panchayat in charge of education, culture and sports had come to the camp. They discussed various issues regarding health and sanitation awareness. They admitted that they had no idea that a village existed at the spot where Koabati was. Anjalidi said she would try to set up an ICDS centre near the village (since the nearest one was quite far away). Dr Latif shared his experiences in health camps and awareness programmes, and repeatedly stressed upon the importance of preventive awareness for various diseases. He gave the examples of typhoid and other water-bourne diseases, and also of snake-bites - something very common in the South 24 Parganas. He informed everyone of the details of the ante-natal care programmes and vaccinations and told the villagers present where they were held. On questioning, he made it clear that there was no shortage of preventive material (vaccines, condoms etc) with the state health centre and he urged everyone to take part in the health programmes. He also discussed the possibility of organising such programmes at the AID-SUK health camp sometime in the near future (he also said that if he had a better idea of what was going on, he would have organised a small awareness programme that very day). There was a 25-year-old girl with physical deformity and stunted growth. She hasn't received the money or all the benefits given by the state to disabled people, although she has a proper certificate of her disability which she produced before us. Dr Latif and Anjalidi discussed her case as well, and told everyone of the benefits given to disabled individuals. Anjalidi told us she would try to bring redress to the girl. At the end of the day, both Anjalidi and Dr Latif assured us of cooperation in all efforts towards the improvement of the area and their concern seemed to be genuine.

We thank all the villagers of Koabati and Abdullah, Soidul, Gautam, Bikash, Pradyot, Kallol and all the Samaj Unnayan Kendra volunteers for putting in such a wonderful effort and making this venture successful. We hope we can sustain this and make it grow.