An eye-opener ….

Dr. Abhijit Vaidya, a renowned Cardiologist, founded ‘Bharat Yatra Arogya Chikitsa Kendra,’ a Rural Medical Referral Centre (RMRC) on 30th Dec. 1990, at a small village, Parandawadi near Pune. The novel idea of RMRC came to his mind during his participation in a historical walkathon ‘Bharat Yatra’, undertook by Shri. Chandrasekhar, former Prime Minister of India and Shri. Bhai Vaidya, a veteran socialist leader, Ex Home Minister, Maharashtra in 1983 from Gandhi Mandapam, Kanyakumari to Rajghat, Delhi, which he had joined as a doctor and got unique opportunity to see real Bharat and miseries of rural India. It was during this ‘Bharat Yatra’ he realized that rural India certainly lacked primary health care but secondary and tertiary medical care was non-existent. To meet this challenge he put forward the idea of RMRC, a specialist diagnostic centre run on a weekly basis by practising specialists from nearby town or city. The RMRC at Parandawadi provided highly specialized services of 25 medical specialists to rural folk from nearly 240 villages for eight years. During this period he also felt the need for an organization that would take up various public health issues and fight for the health rights of the common man.

An Idea is Born…

Latur and Usmanabad from Maharashtra were hit by a massive earthquake in 1993 causing unprecedented devastation and around ten thousand deaths. Dr Vaidya immediately reached Latur with a medical team. This team treated hundreds of patients from nearly ten villages.
Medial relief work during the Latur earthquake was an eye-opening experience. Due to lack of medical knowledge survivors could not help the victims and unfortunately, government medical help reached very late. So if the common man was given the knowledge of ‘Disaster Management and Medical Relief Work’ it would change the face of Disaster Management in our country, Dr Vaidya thought. After coming back from Latur he put forward the idea of training common man in ‘Disaster Management and Medical Relief Work’ and organizing them into a national organization which he named ‘Arogya Sena’ (Health Army). The soldiers of this Health Army would rush in the events of disasters natural as well as man-made and would also take up various public health and social issues. This is how the idea of Arogya Sena (Health Army) was born!

The organization is formed …..

After working on this idea for nearly two years Dr Vaidya founded ‘Arogya Sena’ (Health Army) on 12th March 1995 at Bedse, a tiny village from Tal. Maval, Dist. Pune, Maharashtra State, along with a handful of people. Since then he is been travelling extensively with a team of highly educated and dedicated doctors and volunteers, training people in ‘Disaster Management and Medical Relief Work’, binding them into a network of a nationwide organization, motivating them to rush in the events of any disaster and fight for health rights of our people.