Lifeline Express, the world’s first hospital-on-wheels and promoted by Impact India for the remote rural areas of the country, launched its 51st project here Monday. Jharkhand Chief Minister Babulal Marandi inaugurated the facility. Sponsored by Tata Steel for the seventh time during its decade-long career, the fully-equipped moving medical facility without a doctor, would remain at the service of the most marginalised rural communities around Ghatsila in East Singhbhum, West Singhbhum, and the Seraikela-Kharswan districts of Jharkhand.

The hospital-on-wheels is to stay put at Ghatsila till December 21 and an estimated 3,500 patients are to undergo corrective surgeries of the eye, post-polio deformity, cleft lip, etc, and “get their productive lives restored.” Distribution of hearing aids, callipers, spectacles, etc and post-surgery follow-ups for two years is also part of Lifeline’s objectives . Doctors from Tata Steel’s Tata Main Hospital (TMH) and the Jamshedpur Eye Hospital (both located in Jamshedpur) are to perform the surgeries at the four-coach hospital having a diagnostic test room, operation theatre, an eye correction cabin, a recovery room and a discussion centre. An estimated Rs 20 lakh is to be spent by Tata Steel on the month-long project.

Speaking on the occasion, Tata Steel managing director B Muthuraman said the country needed many such Lifeline-like projects for the poor in the country. Impressed by the Indian project’s success, he said, China too adopted the idea. At the time of UK’s handing over of Hong Kong to China in 1997, Impact India transferred the Lifeline Express technology to China.

Acceding to the Chief Minister’s request, Mr Muthuraman announced that Tata Steel would sponsor the hospital-on-wheels again in January 2002, this time for the economically backward people of Jasidih of the state.