More than the prestigious award that has been given to me, what has made me happy is that the cause — of treating and taking care of mentally-ill destitute — for which my wife and I have been struggling for years on end has been recognised internationally,” Mumbai-based psychiatrist (Dr) Bharat Vatwani, one of the six winners of the prestigious Magsaysay Award 2018, said.
Talking to The Pioneer from his Borivli residence within hours after the International award was bestowed on him, 60-year-old Dr Vatwani was humbleness personified, when he said, “I never imagined that I deserved this award... I am pleasantly surprised. like I said earlier, I am glad that the cause for which I have been working has been recognised”.
Dr Vatwani has been recognised for “his tremendous courage and healing compassion in embracing India’s mentally-afflicted destitute”.
“Their rescue work has been aided by police, social workers, and referrals. Shraddha’s free custodial care and treatment ranges from personal hygiene, medical check-ups, psychiatric treatment, to appropriate medication — all done in the open, healing environment of the Karjat facility,” the Magsaysay Award’s board of trustees said in a statement in Philippines earlier in the day.
Way back in 1988, Dr Vatwani and his wife Smita, also a doctor, founded the Shraddha Rehabilitation Foundation (SRF), a psychiatric care and treatment centre for mentally ill roadside destitute and schizophrenics, one of its kind organisations in the country. Since its inception, the SRF has treated free of cost over 7000 such wanderers and even helped them to reunite with their families.
“With my getting the Magsaysay award, I expect that the focus will turn to the sad cause of the wandering mentally ill people on Indian streets. The people will come forward to contribute to the cause....As far as we are concerned, we have been working for the destitute free of cost for the past three decades,” Vatwani said.
Vatwani admitted that he never realized that the efforts put in him and his wife “efforts for the mentally ill patients who stray on the roads, would one day would one bring him international recognition in the form of the Magsaysay Award”.
One of the SRF’s achievements was establishing an open-air facility at Karjat in the adjoining Raigad district in 2006. This facility helped cure and reunite 5,000 patients with their families.
Dr Vatwani recalled that two years ago, the Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity, Mumbai, had found a 74-year old man from Punjab, mentally ill and wandering on the streets.
“We not only cured him completely, but also reunited him with his family in Punjab 54 years after he went missing,” he said.
With the help of other NGOs, police officials and social workers, the SRF picks up mentally-ill wanderers from streets and cures them. “At our facility, we wandering mentally ill patients from all over India, Jammu & Kashmir, Kerala, Pondicherry, Assam, Tripura. We had one patient from Iran,. After curing him, we handed over to the Iranian embassy who arranged for his return back home to his family,” Dr Vatwani added.
Currently, the SRF’s Karjat facility has 123 inmates, including girls from Assam and Tripura. “ I always wonder as to how these helpless people travel thousands of kilometers to land up on the Mumbai streets, uncared and forgotten,” he said.
According to Dr Vatwani, it takes at least months on average for curing a mentally ill wanderer at SRF. “We have a family-like at SRF. Apart from taking care of them well, we celebrate with them Independence Day, Republic Day, all religious festivals like Diwali, Eid and Christmas, before we reunite them with their families,” Dr Vatwani said.
Vatwani said mental ill persons accounted for over 16.50 crore in the world, of whom nearly 14 percent were Indians. “Eighty per cent of all the districts in the country lack even one psychiatrist in the public health care system,” Dr Vatwani lamented.
There are around 3,500 psychiatrists in India or three per million, compared to 100 in Australia or 150 in developed countries, and just one bed for 44,000 patients.