The Auroville Health Centre

In Auroville, the first and primary health care institution is the Auroville Health Centre, which runs a programme of basic curative, preventive and rehabilitative services. Recognised as a Mini Health Centre by the Tamil Nadu State Government, it is equipped with basic medical facilities and staffed by an international team. It serves the Auroville community as well as about 200 patients daily from the villages at its headquarters near Aspiration and its seven sub-centres. A team of 30 local women trained as village health workers serve supportively in 17 villages, giving first aid, home cures and basic health education.

The Auroville Health Centre also runs a 10-bed in-patient facility handicapped children's day-care centre, a medical lab, an X-ray facility, a pharmacy and a small medicinal plant garden, and offers several preventive health programmes to village women and children.

Starting off in 1969

The Auroville Health Centre traces its humble beginnings to 1969, when the Mother allocated Rs.5,000 to start a dispensary in a thatched hut in the area now known as Douceur. The community of Aspiration was not yet built. There were hardly any Aurovilians living in the area at that time, and the dispensary was created mainly to serve the villagers from nearby Kuilapalayam. The dispensary expanded rapidly. By the end of 1973 a permanent structure, designed by Piero, had been built with donations from a Parsi lady (Ms. Wadia), the Government of India and Auroville.

Sub-Centres in the bio-region

Gradually the Health Centre extended its activities to other villages. Today, there are six sub-centres where daily wound dressing is done and where once a week a doctor from the Health Centre gives consultations. In 16 other villages, health workers trained in the Health Centres provide first aid, calling on the Health Centre in emergency cases. The Health Centre is also active in providing education. It makes high-quality documentary video films that inform the villagers on issues such as hygiene, waste disposal, AIDS and alcoholism, and stages plays under its programme 'Health Education through Drama'.

Team of doctors and nurses

Many people have helped to develop the Health Centre, but four doctors deserve special mention: the late Dr. Satyabratha B. Sen, Dr. Kamla Tewari, Dr. Lucas and Dr. Assumpta. While Dr. Sen originally started the Centre, the latter three took, over the years, not only charge of the running of the Centre with the help of a sturdy team of well trained Western and Indian Aurovilian nurses, but also raised funds to expand its activities and extend the building. They also built the Health Centre staff quarters, and gradually a community health programme took shape.

Community health programmes in the surrounding villages

Apart from basic health care services, the Health Centre team is overseeing the following activities, or has been instrumental in starting them off:

• training village women as Village Health Workers and supervising their work;

• carrying out surveys on problems like filariasis and following up with treatment programmes;

• carrying out water surveys and pushing for the necessary remedial action on wells and tanks;

• working with the schools on health education and carrying out health checks on Auroville and village children via the schools;

• producing health educational videos and arranging health education dramas in the nearby villages;

• overseeing rehabilitative care of polio-affected children in 20 villages;

• organising the construction of public toilets and water supply facilities in the villages;

• maintaining the 10-bed in-patient facility plus a physio-ergotherapy gymnasium for handicapped children.

At present

For personal reasons, Dr. Lucas has ceased to work at the Health Centre and as Dr. Assumpta unfortunately passed away, the day-to-day charge is presently in the hands of a Dutchman, Albert, who joined Auroville in 1997 after having worked for 30 years as Chief Nurse in a hospital in the Netherlands.

"At present the Health Centre treats over 30,000 patients a year, 10% of whom are Aurovilians," says Albert. "It has become a major task to raise the funds to run it. Last year, we opened four beautiful nursing rooms for Aurovilians and villagers. We have a laboratory with all facilities, an X-ray machine and a small operating theatre. There are qualified doctors available during working hours and a nurse on duty around the clock. We are often criticised for not offering 24-hour help, but it is not presently possible as only three Aurovilian doctors work for the Health Centre, and part-time at that."

Challenge

"Altogether there are 11 Aurovilians who hold medical degrees, but the others have all said 'no' for personal reasons when asked to take up this challenge and join the Health Centre. This means that we have to hire doctors from outside to have a doctor available between 8.30 a.m. and 4.30 p.m., and that only a qualified nurse is available during the other hours to give aid. After 4.30 p.m., emergency cases usually will have to be taken to the newly constructed Pondicherry Instutute of Medical Science (P.I.M.S.) in Kanakachettykulam some five kms north of Auroville. That is a setback, but I hope that eventually we will be able to improve this service."

Contact: avhealth@auroville.org.in

Adapted from articles in the Auroville Handbook
and Auroville Today.