Creative Group _ Hospital project at Manda-Titwala, Maharashtra, India

Hospital Project of Creative Group of Manda-Titwala

1. Background:

Titwala is known for the Shri Mahaganapati Temple which is visited by thousands of devotees every day. Situated about 65 kms from Mumbai, it is accessible by central railway suburban trains passing through the ever busy Kalyan railway junction and also by road through well organised network of state transport (ST) buses.

A group of youth used to gather in the evenings in village Manda-Titwala after their college and work was over. They discussed various topics from sports to politics, from social events to health to education systems prevailing around them. Manda-Titwala was included in the Municipal Corporation since last 22-23 years, but in spite of this fact, this Group of youths from Manda, Titwala observed that this area consisting of surrounding villages from Kasara to Shahad has 68 villages including Taluka places like Murbad and Khadavli lacks proper roads, infrastructure, electricity and water supply services, medical facilities etc. The population of this belt is nearly 250,000 to 300,000. They found that the proximity of Kalyan Taluka village hospital at Goveli and Primary Healthcare Center (PHC) at Khadavli did not serve the purpose for which those centers were meant. Sometimes it was not only difficult to find medicines in these centre, but also difficult to find doctors, compounders and nurses, most of the times. There were many cases of patients dying due to either snake bites or scorpion bites in this area because of non-availability of emergency medical treatment. Therefore, this group of youth united together and decided to form a group to contribute to the society positively rather than criticizing the government system.

They named their organization “Creative Group”. The group initially contributed their pocket money to build the benevolent fund for the noble cause and bought school uniforms for 21 poor and needy children in Vidya Mandir School in Manda-Titwala village. It is worth noting here that, all the members of this group wanted to remain behind the scene. Every month each one of these members contributed Rs.100/- towards the development of a common fund for the social cause.

2. Advancing from pocket money to Polyclinic:

The focus of the group on the area of contribution was triggered by a shocking incident, when mother of a group member died due to lack of timely medical facilities. When emergency medical assistance was required by the residents in this area, especially during nights, they had to rush the patient either to hospitals in Kalyan or Mumbai for even stabilizing the patient till he got secondary medical attention. The condition of pregnant women, children and old people was beyond imagination. Identifying the need of medical facilities in Titwala, Creative Group registered a charitable trust under the Companies Act 1956, and Creative Polyclinic was established on 28 October 2000. Keeping in view the objective of providing secondary level medical care to the public at affordable rates, these promoters of the Creative Group nurtured the idea of setting up a polyclinic in Manda-Titwala on a “No profit no loss” principle. All of them were happy when they saw their dream coming true when, Mr. Padmakar Wagh, contributed Rs.15000/- for Dental x-ray machine for the polyclinic; Mr. Vilas Patil donated his personal computer (PC); Mr. Nilesh Mule used to book 60 to 70 tickets single handedly, of charity shows for the development of the polyclinic; Mr. Vikrant Bapat in spite of shouldering the responsibility of his home, decided to devote his time to organize the activities of the polyclinic. The initiative was taken by Mr. Vikrant Bapat, who works as technician in Neurology department of Hinduja Hospital and Mr. Kishore Gavankar to set up the polyclinic.

3. Polyclinic starts functioning:

The polyclinic began its operations initially with availability of services of about 3-4 medical consultants. The ECG machine was donated by Mr. Anil Mahajan, President of the Giant’s Group and Mr. Mahale was kind enough to spare his valuable time to hand over the ECG machine on behalf of the Giant’s Group to Creative polyclinic on 11 November, 2001. Once this was in place, Dr. K. V. Rao, a renowned Cardiologist from Kalyan made his services available to the polyclinic once a week from 15 November 2001. A Nebulizer for asthma patients, x-ray machine for dental care clinic and pathology laboratory was immediately made functional for the villagers.

Thus a team of educated, dedicated, socially committed and honest youths emerged in the village of Manda-Titwala to provide healthcare services to the community.

Their message to the community is:

“The Creative group has been constituted with the blessings and best wishes of the community. We are living a comfortable life today because of the sacrifice of lives of thousands of revolutionaries and millions of people who participated in the Freedom Movement to support the fight against injustice. Those thousands of revolutionaries and millions of Satyagrahis chose to devastate their own lives along with their families. We must honour their sacrifice by contributing to our society without selfish motives. We have therefore joined hands together to make a difference in the lives of people”.

4. Medical camps organized by Creative Group:

Cardiac Check-up camp was the initiative of the Creative Group in close coordination and sponsorship of Dr. Pawan Kumar, a reputed cardiac surgeon associated with Lilavati Hospital. The Creative group had displayed its scientific approach in conducting such a camp. Initially tests like ECG, Chest x-ray, Stress test, 2D-Echocardiography were carried out.
Hepatitis-B vaccination was administered to 10 children from economically backward community.
One oxygen cylinder was donated to Maharathi Karna Gymnasium for its ambulance

April 2001: General health check-up camp was organized by the Creative Group at Vidya Mandir, Manda-Titwala.

May 2001: Blood donation camp was organized at Vidya Mandir School, Manda-Titwala to collect blood for 104 children suffering from Thalassaemia in St. George’s Hospital; one of the patients being Ms. Veena Kishore Kulkarni from village Manda itself. About 55 bottles of blood was collected with active participation of the donors of Creative Group. St. George’s Hospital extended their cooperation to make this camp a success.

July 2001 to August 2001: A vaccination camp to provide Hepatitis – B vaccination to the villagers was organized by the group between 15 July 2001 and 15 August 2001. They could get the sponsorship of a well reputed company in pharmaceuticals industry, Pfizer Ltd. for this camp, as the company could see the sincere and persistent efforts of the Creative Group.

December 2002: A Dental check-up camp was organized by the Creative group

5. Charity Shows for fund raising:

The Creative Group of Manda-Titwala also found an avenue to raise funds for the development of the polyclinic by appealing to a well reputed organization in the field of dramatics, “Suyog”. A charity show of a humorous Marathi play “Heech Tar Premachi Gammat Ahe” was organized by the Creative Group on Sunday 3rd February 2002.

A charity show of another Marathi play called “Jadu Teri Nazar” was also organized by the Creative Group on 19th February 2006, at Acharya Atre Auditorium, Kalyan to raise funds for further expansion of the activities of the polyclinic.

All these years the focus of the group has been to provide health services of better quality at affordable charges and therefore, the group always searched for people of like minds who cared for the welfare of the society.

6. Communication with the community:

The Creative Group of Manda-Titwala, has been observing strict code of ethics and conduct even before the trust was formed. The group has been publishing annual souvenirs since 1999 to inform the villagers about the activities being organized by them throughout the year. The Creative Group is also very particular about distributing leaflets and pamphlets in the village before organizing any activity, whether it is about health care, medical camps, vaccination drives or any other events like socio-cultural nature. The Creative Group has always offered first priority to communication with people and effectively used events such as “Satyanarayana Mahapooja”, “Ganapati Festivals”, Independence Day, Republic Day to seek the opportunity to call people at a common gathering.


7. Project at a Glance:

The Creative Group, registered as charitable trust, has now proposed to build a 20-bed hospital offering secondary level medical care. The hospital will include facilities such as, Operation theatre, 2 ICU beds and 2 beds in Casualty department. The promoters will endeavor to provide medical care to the extent of stabilizing the patients admitted to this hospital before referring them to a tertiary level hospital. The promoters propose to provide a homely atmosphere with basic facilities for the patients admitted here and for their relatives.

The objective: A commercially viable, low cost day care-cum-inpatient centre serving not very critical patients and those patients who do not require long admission will be treated here. This area is predominantly inhabited by families whose average income is around Rs 10,000 – 15,000/-.

Land: The Creative Group has acquired a piece of land near the famous Shri Mahaganpati Temple, Titwala and this land donated by Smt. Dalal, a resident of Dombivili.

Building & Equipment: Now the Creative Group wishes to construct the building, acquire the necessary assets & equipments for hospital and start functioning.

The list of services planned:

Accident & Emergency
Consultation
Day Care Procedures
Dental
Diagnostics
ENT
General Medicine
General Surgery
In- patient activity with OT
ICU care
Imaging / Ultrasound
Orthopedics
Obstetrics & Gynaecology
Ophthalmology
Pediatrics
Pharmacy
Preventive health checkup

8. Promoters:
Mr. Kishore Gavankar (President)
Mr. Vikrant Bapat (VP)
Dr. Padmakar Wagh (Treasurer)

9. Status of the Project:

The Creative Group is sure that with the help of the donors, their dream would become a reality. 80 G certificate has already been allotted which will allow them to accept donations and the donating party will also get concession for their Income Tax purposes.

Kalyan-Dombivli Municipal Corporation has already approved the plans of the Hospital project.

A plot adjacent to the plot donated by Smt Dalal has been purchased by the group, making the total area of the plot to 7000 Sq. Feet. The hospital will be initially of 25 beds with basement and ground plus first floor. The facilities have been planned as per the expert guidance of the medical fraternity of Hinduja Hospital, Mumbai, India.

Toatal donations collected so far about Rs. 15 Lacs. In addition to this Rs. 5 Lacs have been donated by Shree Mahaganapati Temple Trust of Titwala and Rs. 8 Lacs have been donated by Mr. Lele (CEO, Hinduja Hospital)