All of EHA’s 19 hospitals run projects in their communities not only to provide medical care, but also to help with advocacy for government benefits, assist those with disabilities, and teach better agricultural and other income-generating skills, among other things. Sewa Bhawan Hospital is no exception. One service they offer is palliative care. The hospital staff go out into the villages to find people suffering with long-term or terminal illness.

They found one man who was suffering through the final stages of oral cancer, while his wife, Kanti, was about to give birth to their sixth child. This family was out of money because of the cancer treatment they had sought, and Kanti felt helpless. During the time that the staff was working with them, the husband died and Kanti lost her unborn baby. She was grief stricken and inconsolable, and the staff stood by her. They sat Kanti down and asked how they could help her provide for the family and pay off their debt.

Kanti decided that she wanted to rear goats, so the staff gave her a she-goat with two kids. In this way, they provided her with a livelihood to sustain herself and her children, as well as a chance to gain financial independence. The staff were satisfied to know that this family would feel valuable and be cared for. Many times, the outreach of EHA staff goes way beyond hospital care.

Eight-year-old Darshana came to Sewa Bhawan Hospital in critical condition. She had a serious infection in her lower-right leg, which had caused septic shock and acute injury to her kidneys. Darshana had been unconscious for a day, and her leg was badly swollen. Contributing to this critical situation, she was malnourished, weighing only 29 pounds when she should have weighed at least 44.

In speaking with the mother, the pediatrician, Dr. Annie, found out that Darshana had four sisters and her father had died about the time that the youngest girl was born. The mother was supporting the family by working in a small shop and doing day labor. When Darshana was born, she had a spinal defect that required immediate surgery, but for financial reasons, she didn’t have the operation until age two, and no follow-up was done. Consequently, Darshana had some paralysis in her legs and couldn’t walk properly.

Darshana was experiencing overwhelming needs, but the medical team prayed and took her in for surgery. Unfortunately, it was necessary to amputate her leg above the knee. Afterwards, she miraculously woke up right away and began speaking.

Darshana is in the hospital for a long stay, with only her older sister to look out for her since her mother needs to care for the three younger girls. The hospital staff are working to improve Darshana’s nutrition levels and are helping her gain some much-needed weight. Eventually, they will fit her with a prosthesis and give her therapy to adjust to it. All of this medical treatment and loving care by the staff is being done at a significantly reduced cost because the mother has little ability to pay. It is the doctors’ desire to all work together for holistic healing to transform this family, who in turn will be an example to others in the community.

EHA’s Sewa Bhawan Hospital is located in Jagdeeshpur, which is in the state of Chhattisgarh in northeast India. The next closest hospital is nearly 100 miles away, and few patients in this area have the means to travel far.

In this environment, Sewa Bhawan seeks to provide quality health care at an affordable cost. With 100 beds, 10 doctors, and 36 nurses, they diligently care for 3,450 inpatients and 16,000 outpatients each year. The doctors deliver about 1,450 babies annually and perform about 1,400 surgeries.

Their greatest infrastructure needs are for an ICU, a NICU, a new labor room, and a general ward.

If you feel led to help meet these needs, please click the green button on the top right of this page.

Ahibal, a 28-year-old tribal man, was rushed 28 miles to the emergency department of Sewa Bhawan Hospital. His attempt to commit suicide had left him in critical condition. The doctors there assessed him and encouraged his family to take him to a more advanced facility. But without an ambulance with life support equipment, transporting Ahibal wasn’t really an option.

Lacking a mechanical ventilator, the staff at Sewa Bhawan were forced to keep Ahibal breathing with a manual bag and a mini lung ventilator. His treatment stretched out for weeks, and the doctors and nurses cared for his every need, including counseling. After 45 days in the hospital, Ahibal was ready to go home. It was a joy for the medical staff to see him reunited with his family.

Now Ahibal is enrolled in the hospital’s mental health livelihood initiative for suicide survivors. The project has enabled him to provide for his family by raising goats. Thankful for all the help he has received, Ahibal actively works to share information about mental health awareness and substance abuse prevention. EHA has helped bring true transformation in this young man’s life and provided him with practical skills to change his future.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic and the havoc it has wreaked in India, the general medical and surgical caseload is rising at Sewa Bhawan. The staff is working very hard, but they have limited resources and equipment.

They have a new radiologist and are in desperate need of diagnostic equipment.  You can see on the left how dilapidated their old ultrasound machine is. Recently they have had many cases that they simply couldn’t treat because they weren’t able to get the internal imaging they needed.

In recent years, the small but mighty team at Sewa Bhawan Hospital in Jagdeeshpur, North India, has struggled to keep the facility going. On their knees in prayer, they petitioned God for a financial turnaround and for a full medical team, including a gynecologist and radiologist. He answered their prayers in the form of husband-and-wife team Dr. Timothy Chelliah, radiologist, and Dr. Bina Timothy, OB/GYN. Then, in January of 2020, Dr. Divya, surgeon, and Dr. Alvin, medical officer, joined the team at Sewa Bhawan. Amazingly, a cardiologist and a pediatrician have committed to serve at the hospital starting next year as well. God has abundantly supplied the medical specialists this hospital needed!

Since these staff joined, the patient numbers have been growing at the hospital, despite COVID-19! The staff have been working hard to care for patients with many different kinds of medical conditions, but they are severely limited by a lack of equipment and outdated facilities. The biggest need at the moment is a new ultrasound machine. You can see the state of the old one in the article above. Imagine trying to do accurate diagnostics on that old dinosaur! If you feel led, please click on the button to contribute to a new ultrasound machine for Sewa Bhawan.

Sewa Bhawan is a 90-year-old campus located on 30 acres of arable land. Desiring to use their resources wisely, staff at the hospital have grown such crops as onions, potatoes, radishes, tomatoes, corn, spinach, and cabbage. These vegetables are given away to poor patients and the rest is sold to the staff. More long-term crops have also been developed, such as lemon trees, dragon fruit plants, and mango trees. (The choice of crop is dependent on what the local monkeys will stay out of!)

Recently, community staff have also begun to empower women and youth, as well as others in need of income, by teaching them how to cultivate mushrooms as a cash crop. Since growing mushrooms does not require access to land, cultivation is accessible to all. Using plant husks as the base, farmers need few raw materials to grow their mushrooms. Keeping the whole system in plastic bags ensures retention of moisture for successful germination and growth. After just five days of training by community staff, these new farmers are able to grow significant quantities of fast-yielding and nutritious mushrooms to supplement their diet and their income.

Though not fully equipped for emergency medicine, Sewa Bhawan Hospital sometimes receives patients in critical condition. If the need for medical attention is urgent, some patients have the best hope of surviving if they remain at the hospital. Kabir was one such patient. A 32-year-old breadwinner, he suffered poisoning by breathing in too much insecticide.

Unable to remove him from life support for transport to a larger hospital, the staff decided to keep Kabir in critical care. For 22 days and nights, he fought to hold on to his life. Seeing little improvement, the surgeon performed a tracheostomy. He spent another 25 days in the hospital, slowly regaining strength after the procedure.

Both his father and grandfather stayed by his side day after day, hoping desperately for his recovery. As these two men spent many weeks at the hospital, the staff shared their faith in God with them and they responded positively. As he rested in the hospital, Kabir began to understand the power of God and also put his faith in him, even before he could speak again. Eventually Kabir fully recovered and was able to return to work. His simultaneous physical and spiritual healing is a testimony to the faithfulness of God and his work through the Sewa Bhawan staff.

As the staff at Sewa Bhawan Hospital was getting ready for church one Sunday morning, they were called to the labor and delivery room for assistance with a patient in desperate straits. Droupati Binjwar, a 22-year-old tribal woman, had been brought in from a village 35 km away and abandoned at the hospital by her husband. Her only companions were her four-year-old son and her elderly mother-in-law. Neither was in any place to help Droupati with what she really needed—a blood transfusion. Severely anemic, Droupati was not likely to survive this delivery without having some healthy blood infused into her body.

In India, anemia continues to be one of the key challenges contributing to maternal and neonatal mortality in both the antenatal and postnatal care periods. EHA works to spread awareness about the importance of antenatal checkups, as well as nutrition intake and immunization. Determined to help Droupati safely deliver a healthy baby, EHA staff jumped into action, contacting a distant blood bank to obtain a transfusion, arranging for donors, and sending a driver to pick it up. Once the transfusion was taken care of, the doctors worked with Droupati to carefully deliver her baby. An incident that could have ended in tragedy instead culminated in the birth of a beautiful baby girl, thanks to God and the tireless efforts of the Sewa Bhawan doctors and nurses.

Determined to solve the difficulty surrounding the lack of availability and affordability of blood, Sewa Bhawan has since applied for and received permission to start a blood bank at their location. Since the state of Chhattisgarh has very high rates of anemia, especially among women and children, this new facility will help save lives like Droupati and her infant for years to come.