Making endoscopy mobile: the journey.

In spite of the economic development through the past six decades post-independence, nearly 70% of the Indian population still live in villages, and these people very often have limited access to the advanced health-care technology. In an attempt to render cost-effective gastrointestinal care to the rural dwellers, we have initiated a Rural Health Care Project. We have tailor-made and converted a bus into a mobile hospital equipped with basic diagnostic facilities including a custom-made endoscopy unit. This bus travels to rural areas and renders basic diagnostic and therapeutic services including endoscopy. A telemedicine van accompanies the mobile hospital and endoscopy unit and transmits all procedures and data to the main telemedicine center at our parent institute. We have so far performed over 30,000 endoscopic procedures in 4837 villages with a population of over 10 million people. Both the rural dwellers and the staff involved in this project have reported a high level of satisfaction. This project runs on philanthropic donations.