A doctor and a good Samaritan....HEART OF GOLD

Amitava Banerjee, HT, 2 Jul 2014: Plaban Das is a doctor with a mission. His vision is to extend health services to remote villages in Darjeeling Hills and develop skilled manpower in the medical sector. For the past six years Das has been working relentlessly towards imparting free training to school dropouts as nursing aides.
Das joined the Darjeeling and Dooars Medical Association (D & DMA popular as Planters Nursing Home, the oldest private nursing home in Darjeeling, founded in 1947) in 2007. He hails from Assam.
“After I joined, I realised there were not enough skilled personnel, especially nurses in Darjeeling. Nurses from out of Darjeeling Hills were not too keen in coming up to Darjeeling to work. There is a government nursing training facility in Darjeeling. The nurses from this facility are absorbed in government hospitals. With no private nursing training facility, private nursing homes faced acute shortage of nursing staff,” said Das talking to HT.
Not losing hope, 
Das decided to use the situation to his “I decided that I along with my colleagues would train school dropouts who have lost out on mainstream education owing to various reasons (especially economic) as nursing aides. I started the first batch in 2008 with 12 girls from far-flung remote areas like Rimbik, Tukdah. It is three-year training with both theory and hands on training at the nursing home,” said Das.
Since then there has been no looking back. The nursing aides trained by Das have been absorbed at the Planters Nursing Home along with getting jobs in different nursing homes in Siliguri.
Many of the nursing aides trained by Das are self-employed too. “I had trained one as a pathology lab assistant. She now works in Dharan, Nepal,” said Das. “I was lucky to be trained by Das. My whole life changed and now I am employed,” said a 25-year old nursing aide who works in Planters. A school dropout from Ging Tea Estate, she was one of the first batch trainees.
In 2010 Das received an international award from Royal College of Physicians, Spain for human welfare in a developing country.
“The award included 200 Euros also. I donated this amount to our NGO. Our NGO in turn donated the money to another Spanish NGO working in Nigeria. The money was used to buy mosquito nets during a malaria epidemic in Nigeria,” said Das.
In 2009 Das visited Barcelona, Spain for an endoscopic intervention upgradation course. In Barcelona, Das and his Spanish friends opened an NGO “SOS Darjeeling.”
“My Spanish friends accompanied me to Darjeeling. In Darjeeling I took them to far-flung villages so that they could see the condition of health services. As health services are not available in most of these remote areas, we decided to create satellite units manned by paramedics and resource persons. These satellite units would be connected online with the main nursing home.
There would be ambulance service in case of emergencies. We will soon open such units in Rimbik and Tukdah,” said Das.
SOS Darjeeling, the NGO, comprises mainly Spanish musicians. In Spain they organise concerts.
Funds generated from these concerts are used to run this NGO in Darjeeling.