Chandigarh, March 1 -- When people can't come to hospitals, healthcare must reach them, emphasised Padma Shri awardeeDr Abhay Bang as he delivered the 10th Prof BNS Walia oration at the Advanced Paediatric Centre of the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research. Having extensively worked for the betterment of healthcare in rural areas, Dr Bang, a PGI dropout, explained how his home-based newborn care (HBNC) model let to significant improvement in the mortality rate in Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra and was adopted by the ministry of health and family welfare. Today, the standard procedure is being used by 80 countries worldwide for neonatal care in areas where healthcare is not accessible. He developed the HBNC model in Gadchiroli in the 1990s, where his organisation - Society for Education Research in Community Health (SEARCH) - trained village women to identify pneumonia by counting breaths per minute and identify seven symptoms of neonatal sepsis (life-threatening bloodstream infection in infants), enabling early treatment at home. The pneumonia-related mortality rate was brought down from 13.5% to 0.8%, and the neonatal mortality rate from 62% to 26% in Gadchiroli during the early 2000s, achieving even zero mortality rate in some villages. Talking about various health challenges in front of 1.46 billion people country, Dr Banga highlighted how home-based care, empowering people with knowledge and science, can transform rural healthcare scenario. The village women who couldn't read became life savers in Gadchiroli and are called Aarogya Doot. Keeping Aarogya Doot in mind, the ministry of health and family welfare launched Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) worker programme. Last year, 10 lakh ASHA workers provided home-based newborn care to 15 million rural houses, said Dr Bang. Dr Bang, along with his wife Dr Rani Bang, works on healthcare issues concerning the people of Gadchiroli. Their organisation, SEARCH,is working on alcohol addiction, malaria, back ache and other non-communicable diseases. Dr Bang, who left MD (Medicine) residency at PGI to pursue his dream to improve healthcare in rural India, motivated young paediatricians to utilise their expertise in rural areas where tertiary care hospitals like PGI remain inaccessible to people....