DNA: Lifeline Express set to pull into town: April 08, 2008

First it was the Science Express, which enthralled children from across the city. And now, make way for the Lifeline Express – the world’s first mobile hospital on a train, which will visit Mumbai on April 10.

Launched on July 16, 1991, the train has travelled to the remotest rural areas in every state in the country, offering its services to more than four lakh people in need.

“This visit to Maharashtra is extra special, as Lifeline Express will complete its 100th project in India,” said Zelma Lazarus, CEO, Impact India Foundation, which runs the mobile hospital.

The 100th project will be held at Atgaon railway station in Shahpur taluka in Thane district. “We always choose a rural area, where there is a need for medical help. In our visits to rural areas, we have come across many people who have never seen a doctor, let alone a rural hospital,” said Lazarus.

Impact India runs an active community health initiative covering 1.5 million tribals in rural Thane district. “Atgaon, which is a rural area, 96 kms from Kasara, was the perfect place for our project, as our volunteers worked for four months with the local administration to identify patients in need of medical and surgical help,” added Lazarus.

The Lifeline Express will be parked for three weeks at Atgaon – surgeries will be carried out free-of-cost during that time. “We now have a brand new train, donated to us by Sonia Gandhi and the union railway minister Lalu Prasad Yadav, which has double the capacity of the earlier train. This reduces the duration of ‘parking time’ from six weeks to three,” said Lazarus.

Four types of surgeries are conducted on the Lifeline Express, all free of cost — eye operations like cataract using intraocular lenses, squints etc, microsurgeries of the inner ear, correction of cleft lips by plastic surgeons and orthopaedic surgeries for deformed limbs. An average of 80 to 100 eye surgeries are performed daily on the Lifeline Express. “We have already identified at least 55 people for cleft lip surgery this time,” said a spokesperson for Impact India.

This is not its first visit to the state – the Lifeline Express has been to Palghar, Dahanu and Chiploon in the past. It was on show at CST a couple of years ago, and like the Science Express, it attracted hordes of eager children from the city, who wanted to see the train, which finds honourable mention mentioned in their CBSE school textbooks.

This time, too, the train will be on show at Platform No 13, CST station from April 10 to 12, from 11 am to 5 pm for public and school children, after which the train will proceed on its life-saving mission to Atgaon.