A peep into our endeavor

For the past seven years, Sahaya has been working among the destitute, addicts, sick and dying people underneath the railway flyover in Bhubaneswar, near the State Bus Terminus or at the railway hubs of the city. While the most serious cases from among the streets get immediate attention and first aid at the spot, those requiring long-term rehabilitation are also helped for the same. Our work is finished when the patient is restored to his/her family or rehabilitated at any destitute home. Over the past seven years, more than 1000 people have been helped for medication at the Capital Hospital. Many of those who were brought to the hospitals were mentally unstable, handicapped and unable to cope with life on the streets. It is for these children, women and men at risk that Sahaya hopes to give an answer.

Problems we address

It is a matter of great concern that mental disorders afflict 50 million Indian people (5%) who need special care. 80% of our districts do not have even one psychiatrist in public service. Stigma and discrimination attached to mental illness is still a major obstacle to the development of mental health services, to the rehabilitation of those impaired by mental illness, and to an investment into mental health research.
As per the report, road accidents no more remain an other man’s concern. With an alarming magnitude of more than 2500 human deaths, 10,000 injured and fatality rate of 33 in Orissa State, the issue has emerged as everybody’s concern. Many a times the victims of road accidents suffer unattended. Due to the absence of care and emergency medical services, we loose many valuable lives either on the accident spot or at the hospital.

The high incidence of disease and mortality rate in destitute and the people living on the street in consequence of poor nutrition, inaccessibility of medical care, absence of any physical support and money, and ignorance of preventive health issues is a matter of great concern. Every individual in our society has a right to survive and be protected from the hassles of disease.

Innumerous people including those who live on the street and in the railway stations all over the city are living in an environment of utter neglect and deprivation. Thousands go without food, shelter and clothes. They are often victims of fortune and maltreatment. Innumerable people die of starvation, undernourishment and neglect. The people living on the street are totally ostracized from society. Health care is a distance dream.

Nature has endowed us with the instinct to love and take care of the sick people. Today’s complex life style often minimizes our natural commitment towards the rights of needy people. We are more often than not oblivious of our grave responsibility to our fellow members of our society.
Sahaya strives to reach out to all these neglected folks with emergency medical care and basic amenities required during their treatment and linking them to a long term rehabilitation or restoration to their families.

Background or our organization

The endeavor was initiated by a kind-hearted man Kailash Sarangi who was working merely as a vegetable seller in the Unit – I Daily market, Bhubaneswar. He acted as a one man round the helpline for the needy people. If a person from any place in the city required emergency medical help at an odd hour, he is just a phone call away. Even railway police and hospital authorities take help from Kailash in case of emergency. Even today he is often seen at the Capital Hospital cleaning wounds of patients, giving food and bringing diagnosis reports for lonely patients. He does not even hesitate to spend everything he earns on these patients who are not known to him. The requirement of money for these needy patients increased. But he did not give up his noble work. He believes that God helps the person who helps poor and needy.

The splendid effort of Kailash was highly admired by a philanthropist Vegetable wholesaler Sri Santosh Kumar Sahoo who became his patron and extended his helping hand to Kailash’s noble work. His wife Smt. Sasmita Sahoo was also a woman behind him who supported her husband for this noble work. Then their team was enlarged which gave birth to Sahaya – a voluntary action group dedicated to the well-being of poor and destitute patients who suffer without a helping hand.

The strong desire to help the helpless has prompted the organization to expand its social action program. It has now started a school with 20 children living on and around the Railway Platform at an open sky makeshift school near the Bhubaneswar station. It also has a colossal aim to start a rehabilitation centre for the destitute patients to provide them a suitable institutionalised atmosphere with love and care that brings the half-dead picked up from the streets back to life. And many of them can find the zest for life once again.