By Matters India Reporter

Mahabaleshwar, Aug 24, 2020: A 106-year-old dilapidated hospital has become a state-of-the-art healthcare facility in Maharashtra, thanks to a Catholic priest.

Giving a new lease of life to the Morarji Gokaldas Rural Hospital in Mahabaleshwar is among several success stories of Father Tomy Kariyilakulam, who has revolutionized the healthcare scenario of Satara district after he entered the western Indian state a quarter century ago.

“This could be a role model for India to improve public health delivery, without privatization or corporatization,” the 54-year-old priest, popularly called Father Tomy, told Matters India.

The member of the Kerala-based Missionary Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament says he draws on “unique collaboration” among the state government, Red Cross of India and corporate houses to improve a few hospitals and nearly 80 public health centers in the district.

The Mahabaleshwar hospital, a government enterprise, boasts of a hoary past as its foundation stone was laid in 1914 by Lord Thomas Willingdon, the then governor of Bombay. It was originally meant for the use of locals and British tourists.

Despite its hoary past, the hospital — sprawled on an 11-acre forest land adjacent to the Mahabaleshwar market — was a decript structure that resembled “a ghost house” when the Catholic priest started the renovation works at the invitation of the Maharashtra government.

Doctor Amrish Vaidya of Mumbai, whose family has a 100-year-old association with Mahabaleshwar, thanks the Catholic priest for converting “a very basic rural” healthcare institution into a well-equipped facility. “It is now ready for the next level of care for the local population,” he said at the soft launch of renovated hospital on May 8.

Jaysinh Mariwala, a Mumbai-based industrialist who mooted the idea of renovation, said the lockdown forced them to go for a low key opening. “Post-pandemic, we will host a formal opening. That will be the icing on the strawberry cake,” 87-year-old Mariwala said. He also noted that they also plan to go for the phases 2 and 3 of the hospital expansion.

Homi Khusrokhan, vice-president of the Maharashtra unit of the Indian Red Cross Society, says the Mahabaleshwar hospital is “an excellent example of how public-private partnership can improve access to healthcare. This state-of-the-art facility was so badly required here.”

The Red Cross official is happy that the government had entrusted the task to Father Tomy, who has directed the society’s hospital in Panchgani, 20 km east of Mahabaleshwar, for the past 25 years.

The government was impressed with what the Catholic priest has done to Bel Air Hosptial, the Red Cross institution in Panchgani.

Mariwala, who lives 25 days a month in Mahabaleshwar, recalls Father Tomy approaching him to join the restoration work of the Mahabaleshwar hospital and “I committed to the challenge.”

The hospital has been under the Maharashtra Ministry of Health and Public Works Department. It had fallen into disrepair for the past 25 years or so. For more than two decades, it was underutilized and entirely unoccupied.

In late 2018, the health ministry decided to hand over the hospital’s management to the Indian Red Cross Society (IRCS).

Father Tomy says his team now reaches out to some 65 forest villages cut off from mainstream society. “Life in those villages is miserable as people have no no transport, school or healthcare,” he explained.

The Bel Air team now conducts monthly medical camps in those villages. Their village visits led to them discovering several public health centers and their sub centers that were closed because of lack of funds and persons to manage them.

“At least 74 such village clinics have become the best primary health care centers now, fully staffed with nurses,” the priest claims.

The teams work was not limited to healthcare alone. They dug wells , installed hand pumps and created water tanks in 33 villages.

By taking over the hospital and primary health centers gave us an opening to inaccessible places and people on the peripheries,” Father Tomy says.