Ranchi: The Catholic bishops of India are setting up a medical college to take healthcare to a predominantly tribal region.

The CBCI North India Medical College and Hospital is coming up at Mandar, 27 km south of Ranchi, capital of the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand, after several initial hiccups.

CBCI president Cardinal Baselios Cleemis described the medical college as the “long cherished brainchild project” of the conference. He also said the conference would seek the help of the Medical Mission Sisters (MMS), the North Eastern Province of MSFS (the Missionaries of St. Francis de Sales, also known as the Fransalians) and the Archdiocese of Ranchi to manage the project.

Fransalian Father Biju Kanichery, project director and CBCI Society for Medical Education-North India, said the project has gone through “a rather painful and discouraging” patch. “But after a lot of hard work and efforts from many quarters things can now be speeded up with the support of many,” he added.

The priest said the project would be “a solace” to the suffering people in India’s tribal heartland. “In the first phase of the project, infra-structure for a 500-bed hospital and the medical college, nursing college, hostel facilities and other ancillary units, are to be constructed,” Fr. Kanichery explained.

The new venture envisages holistic health for everyone, especially for tribal people and other marginalized groups.

Its mission statement says the project would create “a seat of excellence in medical education” that would provide quality medical care and prepare medical professionals who would cater to the health needs especially of the remote neglected rural populations of the nation.

It strives to offer continued compassionate care, foster a high-spirited, collaborative team; educate future healthcare professional imbibed with value. It would also provide state of art health service and combat local illness and disease. Through discovery and innovation it would lead the nation in quality outcome and patient safety.

The college is patterned on the CBCI’s first such attempt St. John’s Medical College Bangalore. The new project emerged from the CBCI General Body meeting held in Jamshedpur in 2008. Ever since, the project faced many setbacks, said Father Kanichery.

India has at least 176 government medical colleges and 206 private medical colleges. As southern India has largest concentration of medical colleges, large number of students from northern India goes there for medical education.

Jharkhand state was carved out of Bihar in 2000. Rich in mineral resources, the state contributes nearly 40 percent of total mineral production in India, with 48 percent of coal, 48 percent of bauxite, 45 percent of mica, 90 percent of apatite, and 100 percent of kyanite.

Some 26.30 percent of the population is tribal, which includes nine primitive tribes whose literacy rate is less than 10 percent.

The process of industrialization and urbanization in Jharkhand resulted in the displacement of 2.5 million people, 40 percent of them tribal. Nearly 12.5 percent households in the state are in the grip of severe food insufficiency as against the national average of 2.3 percent. Some 43.96 percent of people are below the poverty line.

Nearly 80 percent child birth takes place at home. Maternal mortality is high at 371 for 100,000 live births. As many as 45 percent women have reproductive health problems and 30 percent complain of reproductive tract infections. Some 70 percent of women in Jharkhand are anemic. Among pregnant women, only 38 percent receive antenatal care.

The infant mortality rate in the state is as high as 69 deaths 1,000 live births. Some 60 percent of infant deaths are neo-natal. Only 52 percent children are fully immunized. Some 78 percent of children are anemic and 59 percent below three years of age are underweight.

More than 60,000 deaths occur every year due to tuberculosis in Jharkhand. Prevalence of leprosy is 10 per 10,000. HIV and AIDS pose another rising threat.

The state has only 3,958 health sub-centers whereas the requirement is of 6,043. Interestingly, among the sub-centers, only 1,736 have their own building, according to Bulletin of Rural Health Statistics in India 2012, released by the federal Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

Jharkhand also suffers from an acute shortage of healthcare personnel. The existing 194 community health centers have only 22 physicians, 61 gynecologists and 19 pediatricians.

The proposed medical college is the Church’s response to this situation, the director said.

The first Christian missionaries to arrive in Jharkhand were the Lutherans in 1845 followed by the Anglicans in 1868. Catholics came in 1869. One of the successful Catholic missionaries was Father Constant Lievens SJ who came in 1885. The Belgian Jesuit is now a Servant of God, the first in the four-stage canonization process.

Fr. John Baptist Hoffmann, another Jesuit, was the brain behind the enactment of the Chotanagpur Tenancy Act, 1908, to prevent tribal land alienation. In 1909 he started the Catholic Cooperative Credit Society, which became the backbone of the tribal community’s economic life. Missionaries thereafter have continued working for the all round development of the tribal, the poor, marginalized and neglected ones of society.