Tucked away between commercial establishments on the busy road leading to the Secunderabad station, stands an unassuming building with a board that reads ‘Guru Nanak Medical Centre'.
Inside the centre, patients enter and exit rooms allotted for varied medical services one after the other, without much wait. And as they exit, the approval in their looks is unmistakable. A stark contrast to what one would expect on one look at the non-descript exteriors.
Calling out to the poor and down-trodden over the past five years, the centre, which is a unit of the Guru Nanak Charitable Trust, has been providing quality medical services at highly subsidised prices at a time when health care costs are sky-high.
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“The way the doctor listens and explains the problem itself, makes you feel like half the illness has been alleviated,” says Manga, who had just finished her consultation with a physicist.
The attention the doctors paid seemed extraordinary to her, considering she was charged no more than Rs.20 for the consultation. “In big hospitals, even after we wait for hours and pay hundreds, we do not receive such care and treatment,” she says.
A housewife married to a daily wage labourer she, like numerous others, was initially drawn to the centre due to its affordability. “For those who cannot afford even this, we provide them medical services free of cost,” says R.S Saluja, convener of the centre, who is also the State president for the Andhra Pradesh Private Hospitals and Nursing Homes Associations.
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Interestingly, 365 donors of the Sikh community fund the functioning of the hospital through the year. Each one donates Rs. 5,100 on one day in a year, either for a birthday or an anniversary, and the centre gets funds all through the year.
While Sikh doctors deliver their services free of cost at the centre, all medical equipment there has been donated by members of the Sikh community. “Although this is run by the Sikhs, its services are for everyone. Over 95 per cent of our patients are non-Sikhs,” clarifies Dr. Saluja.