Health

Arunachal bishop fights odds to reach healthcare

by IBNS 14 Apr 2015, 07:59 am

Kolkata, Apr 14 (IBNS): A prominent cleric and social worker from India's Northeast working in the remote east Arunachal Pradesh region says reaching healthcare to the people is their new focus along with education.

Bishop George Pallipparambil is a well known face to the people of East Arunachal Pradesh. He is engaged in many social works for last 30 years and became the first resident Priest of Arunachal Pradesh in 1992 by establishing a boarding school at Borduria village in Khonsa in Tirap district.

He has established the Newman Educational Society (NES) in 2000 to promote the education for the people of Arunachal Pradesh. Bishop Pallipparambil has also established the Agency for Culture and Human Resource Development (ACHRD).

During a brief stopover in Kolkata, the Bishop told IBNS that besides education, providing healthcare service to the people of Arunachal Pradesh was his new focus.

According to him, health issue is like a big battlefield.

"Poverty, illiteracy and sickness have no religion. We need to unite and join our hands together to combat these," he said.

To work for the development and healthcare needs of the people of Northeast, he has established Seva Kendra Arunachal East.  

Bishop said that a new disease  appeared in several parts of Arunachal Pradesh where the symptoms of malaria, typhoid and jaundice were found and he wanted to fight against the disease with his own manpower.

"We are negotiating with the Arunachal government to set up two new hospitals. We have a very good network of nurses, we want to utilise them in this field of community health," he said.

Bishop George said that they were emphasising on hygiene. "We are trying to use the traditional herbal medicines," he added.

Bishop George Pallipparambil said lack of water was the biggest problem of his territory. "To solve this problem, we are tying up with a Polish group to set up a consumption for hand wash in many villages of Arunachal Pradesh. In that system just one cylinder of water will wash 80 hands," he added.

Bishop George said that he wanted to do more in the educational sector for the children of Arunachal Pradesh.

"Children of Arunachal don't have role models and they have very minimum idea about the history of their own area. To resolve this, we are trying to find out the role models of Arunachal and also trying to publish their biographies," the Bishop said.

(Reporting by Deepayan Sinha)