Busy? How about this: 75,000 outpatients, 5,800 inpatients, 1,000 surgeries, and 3,200 births. Does that qualify? It’s what happens in a routine year at Baptist Christian Hospital, located in Assam in the northeast corner of India. It was started in 1954 and joined EHA in 2004. The scope of their medical care has grown significantly, and today they have 110 beds, 19 doctors (although they need 25 to 30!), 135 nurses, 34 allied health workers, and a total of 363 staff members. The strength of the hospital is their 24-hour and critical care, and they recently renovated their emergency room.

Most of the hospital buildings are 70 years old and in need of renovation or replacement. Needed upgrades include reworking the electrical wiring in the entire hospital, building more staff housing, and establishing a blood bank and a dialysis unit.

If you would like to contribute to help Baptist Christian meet these needs, click on the button on the top right.

Imagine raising a child who is unable to walk, or trying to teach a child with hearing loss to communicate meaningfully. Now imagine doing so as a desperately poor parent in North India, where any disability gives cause for social exclusion and shame. EHA is committed to helping such families.

Baptist Christian Hospital runs a significant community-based rehabilitation program for adults and children with disabilities. They provide both home-based and center-based therapy, assistive aids, and therapeutic items. Part of their goal is to raise awareness about living with disabilities and how to improve lives.

Two individuals in one community were struggling with social inclusion and interaction. Krisha is a nine-year-old with cerebral palsy and Raju is a 28-year-old with an intellectual disability. Both of them rely on their families for care, and when their parents found out about BCH’s program, they sought help. Through ongoing community discussions about disability, both Krishna and Raju have been increasingly integrated into school and social programs.

Teachers now provide Krishna with extra attention and grace periods for his work, reflecting a broader acceptance. A notable highlight of their inclusion came during a village music competition during the Bihu festival, where Krishna performed as the lead singer of one group, and Raju played the cymbal. Their group was led by a person with blindness, further underscoring the spirit of inclusivity.

The work that the BCH community staff do is making a huge difference across communities and in the lives of many individuals.

Each of EHA’s six nursing schools is working to enhance their programs and facilities per the requirements of the Indian Nursing Council (INC). The INC wants all nursing programs to upgrade to the more demanding Bachelor of Science degree, requiring significant changes in lab spaces, equipment, teaching facilities, and student housing.

Baptist Christian Hospital (BCH) in Tezpur, Assam, is thrilled to be receiving a $1.2-million grant from the American Schools and Hospitals Abroad organization. BCH will break ground on their new buildings in March 2023 and hopes to complete the expansion in 2024. This new nursing college will allow more local young people to study nursing at BCH and ensure a better future for themselves and their families.

Baptist Christian Hospital’s School of Nursing is thrilled to announce the opening of their new building. The recently completed facilities will provide housing for their student nurses.

This expansion will allow BCH to better educate their students and bring more quality nurses into EHA hospitals. Dr. Sushil and Mrs. Florence Sethi contributed generously toward this construction project and are pictured to the left.

Many of EHA’s seven nursing schools desperately need more facility space in order to run a quality educational program. If you feel led to give toward this need, click here to go to EHA’s donation page, and select Nursing Education Fund in the drop-down menu.

A tiny baby was brought over 125 miles to Baptist Christian Hospital, an enormous distance for this very poor couple to travel. Born over three months early, she weighed a mere 2 pounds. Upon their arrival, the medical officer immediately noticed her diminutive size, and he could hardly believe the parents’ story. This helpless infant had been denied admission at every hospital they had stopped at along the way. Baptist Christian Hospital was their last hope.

The odds of a baby’s survival increase as the pregnancy progresses, and even an extra week in the womb can make a big difference. The survival rate for this infant was about 50 percent with the best care possible. While the staff at Baptist Christian Hospital did not have incubators, mechanical ventilators, preterm nutrition, or a pediatric surgeon, they were determined to do the best they could for this child. The baby was kept warm in the nursery for ten days. Her mother was taught “kangaroo care,” a method of caring for premature babies in which infants are held skin-to-skin by a parent for as much of the day as possible. Initially the baby was given only IV fluids; later, she transitioned to feeding via a tube in her nose. Her weight initially dropped during her time in the hospital, but by the time she went home, she had begun to gain again. After ten days, the parents wanted to take her home because they were daily wage earners and had no income coming in.

The baby was brought back in to the hospital for a checkup in a month, and her weight had increased to four pounds. Since she now had the strength, the mother was told to begin breastfeeding the baby. The staff was thrilled at the health of the child. Because the parents could not afford to pay for the hospital stay, the whole bill was written off. This sort of largess is possible because of generous supporters like you.

When he was 13 years old, Koshy George decided to go into medicine. His uncle, a mission doctor in Kerala, was his inspiration. Koshy was impacted greatly by watching him remain peaceful as he awoke at odd hours to attend to patients. Sometimes, his uncle took him on walks and they talked about the challenges faced by the poor. Because of these conversations, he knew becoming a mission doctor was for him.

His introduction to the Emmanuel Hospital Association came through his wife, Lydia John. They studied together at the Christian Medical College of Vellore in South India. She was the only person Koshy knew who had actually enjoyed her two years of work at a mission hospital because she served with EHA. Koshy’s experience in South India wasn’t as positive, and he became disillusioned by the corruption in the system. After Koshy and Lydia got married, he joined her at EHA and soon realized it was the best place to work.

Since 2001 the couple has served at three different EHA facilities, and they are now in Tezpur where Koshy is managing director of Baptist Christian Hospital. The leadership role has forced him to learn a lot about management, and develop skills in handling people of different temperaments. Inevitably, he has faced challenges with stress and conflict management, with encouraging others to take up responsibility, and with supporting them as they learn from their mistakes. To Koshy, it is crucial that the whole team grow in God and learn to lean on Him rather than trust their own reasoning and understanding.

More broadly, Koshy has found EHA’s leaders focused on God and His purposes for their lives. This gives the organization a unified direction. There is transformation among the staff when they realize that they are part of a large family building the Kingdom of God by reaching the poor and marginalized. Each hospital’s opportunities are unique to its area, and in Tezpur they have seen God open and close doors for various projects and ideas in His time.

The impact on the community and its people is tremendous. They know they are touching the lives of otherwise forgotten people, and they bring the love of God to them in a way that makes a real difference in the care they provide. There is transformation, restoration, and renewed hope in the lives of both the community and the hospital staff. The joy that comes from this surpasses anything that money can buy!

Your support of EHA allows nearly 200 doctors like Koshy George to freely share and demonstrate the love of Christ to the poor of North India. Every dollar given to support EHA’s doctors is another dollar released to provide care for the thousands of penniless patients who otherwise would go without medical attention.

In the United States, we take our medical care and the accessibility of medical information for granted. In India, the poor often have little access to medical care and even less understanding regarding their medical conditions. One 30-year-old man was sure he was dying.

Ismail came to Baptist Christian Hospital with an excruciating pain on the right side of his back. His local doctor’s treatment had accomplished nothing. After examination, it was decided that Ismail needed surgery to remove a stone lodged in his ureter. Now he is well and at peace. “I am relieved now. I thought with the pain I would end up losing my life. I thought I had a major illness, but the doctors and nurses here explained my problem clearly to me, and now I am happy my operation is done.”