Sathya Sai Sanjeevani, the hospital chain sans billing section, goes global

The hospital chain sans a billing section is expanding its footprint to the US

sai-1 The Sathya Sai Sanjeevani team besides going and performing pediatric cardiac surgeries for free in other countries, also builds local capacity by giving totally free of cost training to local doctors at the Sathya Sai Sanjeevani hospitals in India

When Fiji Prime Minister Bainimarama opened the first Cardiac Screening Centre in the country under the auspices of the Sai Prema Foundation on April 24, it was declared that a Sri Sathya Sai Sanjeevani pediatric cardiac hospital sans billing section—the first such hospital in the South Pacific—would be inaugurated in Fiji by April, 2020.

Likewise, as early as 2015, it was declared by young spiritual leader and former Sai student, Madhusudan, of Sathya Sai Grama, Muddenahalli, that a Sathya Sai Sanjeevani tertiary care hospital would come up in Mississippi, the poorest state in the US and home to Blues music. On June 19, the seed for such a hospital was sown, through People Shores, a public benefit company invited to Mississippi's Clarksdale by Jon Levingston of the Coahoma Chamber of Commerce, the City and County officials. Modelled on Rural Shores, the Indian company which has transformed many poor Indian villages into hubs of prosperity by training and employing over 10.000 village youth in business processing centres in rural India, People Shores is committed to train and transform young adults of disadvantaged communities of America into knowledge professionals, creating jobs and improving community infrastructure, across needy areas in the US.

Against the backdrop of the health care crisis fuelled by the closure of rural hospitals in the Mississippi Delta, the inauguration of a totally free Sri Sathya Sai Sanjeevani Medical Centre for Women and Children at the People Shores facility, seemed a boon to Mayor Chuck Espy of Clarksdale. Inspired by Baba, during the inauguration, it was declared that in two years, the medical centre would grow into a multi-speciality tertiary care hospital sans billing section. Murali Vullaganti, CEO of People Shores, was also urged to scale up and create 2,000 jobs for the economically disadvantaged Mississippi Delta youth.

The Sri Sathya Sai Health and Education Trust, headed by yet another former Sai student, C. Sreenivas, has already set up under the Sanjeevani umbrella, secondary care hospitals providing totally free of cost medical care, in Africa, in the parish of liberal Christian priest Father Charles Ogada of Enugu in Nigeria and in Sri Lanka's Batticaloa, home to 30,000 plus war widows. These, too, are to soon grow into tertiary care hospitals.

Declaring that free health care was the inalienable right of all peoples, Baba’s students are all set to establish four more Sathya Sai Sanjeevani state of the art hospitals, providing the best of tertiary care totally free to beneficiaries in Malaysia, Mauritius, Turkey and Argentina as well. India's own Sathya Sai Sanjeevani Child Heart Care hospital  chain, the biggest in the world, is to add a fourth hospital near Kolkata and a fifth in the largely underserved Gujarat-Rajasthan border area. While India's corporate hospitals attract patients from the developed west, Sathya Sai Sanjeevani has given a new lease of life to children from over 12 developing countries, including notably, Pakistan. The Sathya Sai Sanjeevani team besides going and performing pediatric cardiac surgeries for free in other countries, also builds local capacity by giving totally free of cost training to local doctors at the Sathya Sai Sanjeevani hospitals in India.

A visibly emotional Isaac Tigrett, who funded the first ever Sathya Sai Super Speciality hospital at Puttaparthi over two decades ago, by donating the proceeds from the sale of his Hard Rock Cafe chain, now welcomed Sathya Sai Sanjeevani to his own home state of Mississippi. The sans-billing section Puttaparthi medicare model has proved sustainable, having served over three million patients over a quarter of a century. What is heartening is, similar newer Sathya Sai hospitals are coming up globally, providing the best of compassionate medical care at zero cost to the beneficiaries. As Tigrett declared, 'the Sathya Sai Baba way' is perhaps the only way forward, for even the wealthy west that is reeling under ever increasing health care costs these days.

TAGS