Where There Is A Will, There Can Be A Change

We always talk about women who make an impression in our lives. However, here is a man whose work touches the lives of many women with guidemytreatment.com.

Women’s health continues to be a matter of concern in our country even today. Women face a lot of physical as well as mental illnesses that go unnoticed in this modern, technology-centric fast world, where people are chained to their work. The desire to give back to society is however, still alive in the hearts of some people, who in turn act for a better society.

In this interview, I talk to Tanay Tulsaney, Executive Director of Guide My Treatment Medical Services, which works towards improving the health of rural women.

Tanay Tulsaney: In this beautiful life, I have worked with the biggest consulting firms delivering services. I had this feeling of dissatisfaction, which clearly and repeatedly reminded me of something that I was doing right, but just for myself and not for the society. Seeing children and women deprived of their basic health checks was pinching me for quite some time. (Not that in a country like India, health alone is a social issue; statistically people die more of hunger than illness).

However, considering this very fact, we built this medical engine named guidemytreatment.com. We have been holding medical camps for the rural sector to educate them of the doctors in their own vicinity. This medical engine will enable them to look at their reviews, qualifications, experiences and based on this, guidemytreatment.com could help people get through the qualified doctors through the portal.

What does community development mean to you?

Tanay Tulsaney: We took this as a challenge in the year 2012 when we started this forum and failed miserably to gather people and our own employees for a noble cause. We had a lack of funds to educate people and conduct big health check campaigns across the country. Today, we conduct paid camps at corporates’ and the money that we make through these camps is what we use to organize health check camps in the rural sector. Community service, however, is an ongoing process that has always given me inner satisfaction. Every time we have more people gathering in these camps, it results into a small contribution for the community’s wellbeing.

Never miss real stories from India's women.

Register Now

Though there are just online queries that we receive for In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) and other gynaecological needs in the country, we try to sensitize women on many different dimensions. We conduct awareness camps and walk door-to-door educating women of diseases like breast cancer and provide other basic information on hygiene, which can be difficult to maintain in the rural areas of the country.

What are your observations and people’s response to these camps? 

Tanay Tulsaney: We proposed a free medical checkup for 32 villages of Rohtak, near Haryana  and have recently coordinated with almost every village to conduct a free camp this year. This  would of course need more funds and it would help us create more offline queries for the portal.

However, we have planned to do it one at a time, completing the task in the next 10 months. Our  first health check activity was in a small village of Sambhaoli near Hapur (UP), which surprisingly saved a couple of lives, for people who were nearing a heart attack.

Children in these rural areas were benefitted the most as they went through a regular health check the way children from an urban community do in the metropolitan cities of the country. People have really been happy with our co-ordination and the human intervention through which we assist them every time they call our helpline numbers to describe the symptoms, and we finally suggest them the right doctor for the same.

We are now also exploring the scope of manufacturing sanitary napkins and sell it door-to-door at the cost price, simply as an initiative for better rural hygiene. Currently, we direct them to the right doctors but we now want to become a significant contributor by increasing their education towards maintaining good hygiene. This would also include a small program of women’s empowerment by hiring one woman from every village to manage our ongoing operations in that particular area so that our 360 degree presence remains for good. Water, sanitation and hygiene education is what we have successfully delivered and would continue delivering it in a more structured manner once we figure out the needs and demands of more people.

What is your role in the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan campaign?

Tanay Tulsaney: We have currently tied up with a new venture named ujosho.com started by Abhishek Marwaha. Keeping in mind the fact that people litter and spit out of taxis, cars and other public transport, he started selling disposable bins at a very cheap price and he calls it a core common sense-based solution. We would shortly work collaboratively in educating people to help each other maintain better hygiene and a cleaner country. We appreciate working with like minded people and better talent just because we want to attain the change in society sooner as this social cause matters a lot.

It gave us immense satisfaction when we read the prime minister talking about creating portable toilets in the villages across the country, and it felt as if it is our voice and our reach that has helped the ruling party understand the need of community hygiene treating it as important as the economic, social and cultural factors of the community well-being of the country.

We would treat this as an ongoing activity and keep women’s health and hygiene as an ongoing concern till we physically see a drastic change in the rural sector where we have already entered. However, when we talk about community service, we would also concentrate equally in the health education of children. We have plans to work more for the Sambhaoli village and villages in Rohtak, and have campaigns to enter Gujarat later this year. A community’s health is our priority and especially, that of women as we consider each and every one of them special.

Image of a word cloud via Shutterstock

Comments