Vijayawada: Vasavya Nursing Home celebrates golden jubilee

Vijayawada: Celebrating golden jubilee is a dream for any institution. It is a very difficult task to keep any institution running continuously for fifty years that too when the head of the institution is an off-beat personality like Dr Goparaju Samaram.

Vasavya Nursing Home is such an institution which is celebrating its 50 years of its existence in serving the poor and downtrodden, dispelling superstitions, promoting scientific temper, spreading medical knowledge, giving much-needed sex education for people of all ages through All India Radio, TV and print media, organising blood and eye donation camps and AIDS awareness programmes, undertaking mass vaccination programme of polio, DPT, MMR, cholera and Rubella, conducting surgeries to the needy, and to cap it all publishing more than two hundred books spreading knowledge on various issues for the better physical and mental health of people.

The Vasavya Nursing Home performed 200 cardiac surgeries, 40,000 cataract operations, 3010 polio corrective surgeries for physically challenged due to polio, 860 corneal grafting for blind through Swetcha Gora Eye Bank, 16 cleft and cleft palate correction, 200 Jaipur foot and 110 wheelchairs provided to the differently abled persons all these years which was a stupendous performance.

The nursing home also imparts training to nurses, rural health workers, training in birth attendants, physiotherapy training, medical laboratory training, health and nutrition training to IRDP workers, Balwadi teachers and Anganwadi workers.

Vasavya, the name is the acronym of Vastavikata (Reality), Sangha Drishti (Social outlook), Vyaktitvam (Individuality). The acronym was coined by the late atheist leader Goparaju Ramachandra Rao popularly known as GORA who brought respect to atheism by establishing the world's first atheist centre in Vijayawada in late 1930s.

The philosophy behind the name aptly suits to the activities of the nursing home which believes in the reality, the social outlook in serving people and individuality without compromising on any issue concerned with the people's lives.

When the nursing home was started in 1970 at the then almost desert Benz Circle everyone wondered what the doctor would do at such a place. But the people proved it wrong by visiting the hospital.

For the last fifty years, the nursing home has undertaken numerous programmes for spreading the knowledge it believes in and at the same time serving the poor by charging very little. The never ending queue of patients to the hospital is the testimony of people's trust in the physician, Dr Samaram.

He is ably supported by his sister Dr Goparaju Maru who takes care of gynic cases and her son Dr Olos Gora takes care of physiotherapy.

Sitting in the outpatient ward, the patients are attracted by a number of books present in the cupboard. If anybody wants the books could be read and if needed the books could be purchased.

Dr Samaram, in spite of his roaring practice and social service activities, finds also time to write books. Many people wonder as to how he could manage to find time to write so many books in his busy life. He published around 215 books so far on various issues right from sex education to the good life in the old age. There is no subject which he did not touch in his books.

Apart from all these activities and busy practice, he finds time to give TV interviews on various issues including sex education.

Regularly, he uploads short interviews on YouTube on various issues right from dispelling superstitions like Banamati, Chetabadi, encouraging the pregnant women to come out during the eclipse. It has been proved time and again that nothing happens to the foetus in the womb if the pregnant women come out during eclipse. There are six channels which promote rationalism, atheism, medical knowledge, sex education among others.

In addition to these programmes, the nursing home organises weekly health education programme every Saturday inviting specialists in various fields to present talks on their respective subjects. So far, they have conducted 1050 programmes which literally mean they have covered 1050 subjects to bring awareness among people.

To sum up the Vasavya Nursing Home is an institution par excellence.