In 1996 our Trust started a Community Health Centre at Mota
Fofalia under Public-Private Partnership with the necessary modifications in
the Act as an experimental model project for two years. In the beginning, the
new system of the Community Health Centre was not acceptable to the local
people due to the fact that the Centre was charging a nominal fee from the
patients to provide quality medical services, whereas there were no charges in
other community health centre's functioning in different parts of the state.
Further, on one hand the locals demanded employment in the Centre though they
did not have the requisite qualifications and on the other hand the qualified
medical practitioners and specialists were not ready to offer their services in
a remote rural area.
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In order to overcome the fees charged by the Trust, we
persuaded and convinced the patients that the Community Health Centre provided
quality services, like a private clinic in the city area, at their door steps,
with the help of specialized doctors of different branches of medicine and thus
the nominal amount paid by the patient is only be considered as a token amount
towards the overhead expenses. Further, to sort out the issue in the
appointment of para-medical staff, we selected the young boys and girls from
the unemployed families of the village and trained them for the clinical
services at our Community Health Centre itself. To avail the expert doctors and
specialists for the Centre, we used our available resources and influence to
convince them to offer their services by extending them extra incentives.
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