Rome (Fides) - CHAI, an Indian Catholic Healthcare NGO one of the most important in the world in the sector, has organised a campaign to guarantee “universal access to basic health care services for the poor and the excluded in India”.
This emerged in a Meeting in Kolkata yesterday and today of 500 delegates. The director of CHAI said that 57 years since its independence India has one third of the world’s TB sufferers. In India every minute a person dies of TB. Hence the need to promote programmes of basic health care for the most disadvantaged Indians .
CHAI can be traced to World War II when there was severe famine in Bengal and the Archbishop of Madras, a Salesian, asked the local women religious to train as nurses. Today CHAI has 3,300 member doctors, nurses working at hospitals and health centres. (AP) (28/10/2004 Agenzia Fides; Righe: 16; Parole: 175)