OPERATION ASHA

Operation ASHA was founded by Dr. Shelly Batra and Sandeep Ahuja in 2006. Shelly is a renowned gynecologist surgeon in New Delhi. She has been serving slum-dwellers for two decades, providing consultations and carrying out free surgeries. Sandeep joined her in 1998 and started raising funds to support her work. In 2005, they decided to focus on tuberculosis and incorporated OpASHA. A large section of the population OpASHA serves earn 20 cents a day per capita, and are worse off than even the ... absolute poor as defined by the World Bank (income less than a dollar a day). Some of them are rag-pickers. "I have been thinking every day of the slum that we visited. As I think of it now tears form ..., the smell... , sewage, trash and flies..., the heat, the rancid pales of water, the public defecation, or the food being cooked next to trash covered in flies. I find it sad that a house pet in America lives better than these human beings. ...Not even my cat would touch such provisions". Operation ASHA works in both urban and semi-urban slums and rural villages. In Urban communities, where the population density is high, we establish treatment centres (TC) in the communities where patients live, so patients: 1) can walk to clinics to receive treatment, saving time and money, 2) do not miss work by having to travel long distances to receive treatment, 3) can receive treatment outside standard business hours. OpASHA clinics operate between 12 and 20 hours a day, 4) are easily tracked by OpASHA care providers and counsellors during the course of treatment to decrease default.More