For more than one hundred years, the sanatorium in Madanapalle has been the beacon of service for TB patients. Madanapalle is also known for its sanatorium established in 1912 for the treatment of tuberculosis (TB).
TB is an infectious bacterial disease,which spreads through the air from person to person, if not treated properly, it can be fatal. People infected with TB bacteria who are not sick can take medication to prevent TB disease from developing in the future. According to a report, as of 2018 one quarter of the world’s population is thought to have latent infection with TB with new infections occurring in about 1% of the population each year.
Sanatorium in Madanapalle is located in Arogyavaram, literally in Telugu it means a health village. Madanapalle Union Mission Tuberculosis Sanatorium receives patients for relief from TB. It plays the role of a health resort and hospital. Bandlapalli Madanamohan Reddy, a resident of Chittoor district, recollects his uncle and nephew who had TB and the only place to visit was the sanatorium in Madanapalle. He says, Aryogyavaram’s location has a magical quality and healing properties for TB patients especially the air and the plants, and the regime of walking in addition to care provided by the staff.
HISTORY OF SANATORIUM:
Arogyavaram Medical Centre, formerly known as Union Mission Tuberculosis Sanatorium, has 350-bedded General Hospital. It was inaugurated in 1915 by Lord Pentland, the Governor of Madras Presidency during British colonial rule, and Dr Christian Frimodt Moller was the First Medical Superintendent. The Centre recalls, “With the ushering in of the era of domiciliary care of TB (which was also advocated by this Institution as early as 1920) the need for sanatorium diminished. Today TB has re-emerged to be the number one killer disease with great losses in terms of human life and disability. With the existing social, religious and cultural restrictions on the women in this part of the country, the problem of women with TB is an emergency on its own.”
FIRST SANATORIUM IN SOUTH INDIA:
Arogyavaram in 21st century is the resort for helpless and hopeless TB patients. It was the first Sanatorium in South India. India’s first Prime Minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, visited this centre in the 1952 and commended the work of sanatorium. The UMTS was renamed as Arogyavaram Medical Centre and was converted in to a General Hospital in 1975, and inaugurated by S. Obul Reddy as the Governor of Andhra Pradesh.
WORLD TB DAY: 24 MARCH
World TB DAY: We commemorate World Tuberculosis (TB) Day on March 24. World Health Organisation (WHO) says there is a need ‘to raise public awareness about the devastating health, social and economic consequences of TB, and to step up efforts to end the global TB epidemic. The date marks the day in 1882 when Dr Robert Koch announced that he had discovered the bacterium that causes TB, which opened the way towards diagnosing and curing this disease.’ WHO says TB remains the world’s deadliest infectious killer. Each day, over 4000 people lose their lives to TB and close to 30,000 people fall ill with this preventable and curable disease. Global efforts to combat TB have saved an estimated 58 million lives since the year 2000. To accelerate the TB response in countries to reach targets – Heads of State came together and made strong commitments to end TB at the first-ever UN High Level Meeting in September 2018.’
TB EXPERT:
“Rhetoric and reality: On World TB Day on March 24, we mourn the thousand deaths every day while going through the annual rituals of rallies, speeches and seminars. Hackneyed gestures and lax efforts are commonplace. One who follows up these acts can visualise a great scenario of farcical dimensions. The grand pronouncements and the rhetoric may never meet the reality. Why all this annual hype … singing the same chorus in a different style? The statistics rolled out must be taken with a pinch of salt as the infrastructure is plagued by a lack of genuine reporting systems,” wrote T. Rama Prasad drtramaprasad@gmail.com in The Hindu Sunday, 15 March, 2020. “TB has been made a ‘notifiable disease’ for better follow-up and management. Pan-India engagement with the private sector to close the enormous gaps across the patient-care cascade in private medical care has been initiated. We should hope and wish that this strategy would eliminate TB from India by 2025. Let’s do a review that year against the backdrop of a SYMBOL ‘DOLLAR 5 trillion economy’.”
The mission of the medical centre: ‘Our mission is to train more committed doctors year after year who are willing to serve in rural India.’
To visit and learn about the service provided by Arogyavaram Medical Centre, is one of the top 12 experiences to do, to feel, to see in Madanapalle. Possibly, you may also extend help in one or the other way to the centre.
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