The amazing legacy of world class tertiary care hospitals without billing sections, created by Sri Sathya Sai Baba, is only surpassed by the chain of such hospitals his students are creating, thanks to his continued guidance from the beyond. They have, in the past six years, set up two paediatric cardiac care hospitals in Chhattisgarh and Haryana, secondary care hospitals in Nigeria, Sri Lanka and India, and many health care centres and mobile clinics that reach out to the rural needy in India, Malaysia, Fiji, Sri Lanka and Indonesia.
Last year, a most needed Divine Mother and Child Program—a unique government-private partnership covering the health of pregnant women and children—was launched in Karnataka, Chhattisgarh and Haryana, and is spreading across South Asia, South east Asia, Oceania and South America.
On November 27, 2016, while inaugurating the Paediatric Cardiac Hospital in Haryana, Baba's disciple Madhusudan announced that he would launch another paediatric cardiac hospital in Maharashtra within two years. True to his word, exactly on November 27, 2018, the Sri Sathya Sai Sanjeevani Paediatric Cardiac Care Centre was inaugurated in Navi Mumbai. In keeping with the Sai motto of silent selfless service, the ‘VIPs’ at the inauguration were the children being screened and the workers who achieved a miracle by getting most of this hospital built in a record sixty days!
Team Sanjeevani aims to train health workers to use the ‘smart steth’ created by Dr Abdul Kalam’s protégé Arvind Thiagarajan of Silicon Valley and screen 100,000 children of Maharashtra in phase one. The Maharashtra Sanjeevani will also be a global paediatric cardiac skills training centre for health professionals. With one in 100 babies born having congenital heart defects, India is home to half of the world’s children with congenital heart disease. Maharashtra alone has over 23,000 children born every year with heart defects of whom 90 per cent die because of lack of awareness and access to affordable treatment.
The Sanjeevani hospitals in Chhattisgarh and Haryana have till date done over 6,000 cardiac surgeries and 1,500 cardiac interventions successfully. Over 60,000 children have been screened—all entirely free of cost. Timely surgical correction of congenital heart defects assures these children a normal productive lifespan. At Baba’s hospitals not only are they treated, but each child is followed up and mentored for life in a unique ‘Gift of Life’ programme.
The coming year will see the launch of the first Paediatric Cardiac Hospital sans billing section in the South Pacific—the Sri Sathya Sai Sanjeevani Hospital in Fiji. While inaugurating the Mumbai hospital, it was announced that they would be setting up 250 free medical diagnostic centres across the country to screen and ensure early detection and treatment of children with heart problems.
Baba’s devotees from over 30 countries attended the inauguration of the hospital in Navi Mumbai. At a conference on November 30 in Kolkata, attended among others by West Bengal minister Sri Gautam Dev, Madhusudan announced that a totally free of cost centre for doctors wishing to pursue post graduate education and training in cardiac sciences and a fourth paediatric cardiac care hospital offering totally free of cost treatment for the children of West Bengal and the north-east region, are soon to come up!