The biggest challenge to healthcare in India today is not the absence of technology or even a lack of resources; it is in fact that a significant percentage of the country has extremely restricted access to basic medical services. While urban areas are well connected to hospitals and health centers to the point that even the poor have some degree of access to affordable medical facilities, in rural India, the story gets a lot grimmer. When it comes to providing for small, remote villages, the economics are not in favor of private sector players as these areas are commercially not profitable given the fact that people tend to be poorer, infrastructure is rudimentary, and rural populations are small and scattered over a large area.
As a result, villages have been widely excluded from much of the Indian healthcare sector’s breakthroughs and people in these regions suffer from noticeably higher mortality rates. Sadly, the mobile healthcare sector is no exception to this rule, but progress is being made. Where other ambulance services have tried and failed, or never tried to begin with, ZHL has taken up the mantle of helping Indians in the country’s heartland get access to the healthcare they so desperately need. This led us to begin special operations in some of the most remote parts of India that focus on distributing emergency medical supplies, containing the spread of contagious diseases, and accessibility to quality healthcare.
Mobile healthcare services are generally makeshift camps staffed with doctors, nurses, health workers, volunteers, and their assistants. These healthcare professionals are trained to identify and treat related ailments, conduct basic diagnosis, prescribe pharmaceuticals, and refer serious cases to specialists, if and when they deem necessary. This set-up is significantly more economical than establishing permanent facilities and can cover a much larger area owing to their mobility, ideal for rural India’s unique circumstances. Currently, ZHL’s medical centers are able to service up to five villages a day, making them the ultimate tool in reducing illness rates across the heartland.
Furthermore, the mobile medical units led or partnered with ZHL are now able to conduct complicated medical procedures like screenings, post-natal services, electrocardiography, and training programs among other healthcare providers. We’ve even tied up with prestigious medical colleges to aid us in our efforts while inculcating the ideas of selflessness and service among whole new generations of future medical practitioners.
While ZHL and several other players, public and private, have invested countless time and resources to bringing quality healthcare to much of rural India, the challenge has only just begun. Everyone deserves access to the best medical facilities their nation has to offer, and so long as people in India continue to die from totally preventable and curable diseases, we at ZHL will continue conducting our mobile healthcare services.