About Us

Bharat Yatra and RMRC, First inspiration...

Dr. Abhijit Vaidya, a renowned physician and cardiologist, founded ‘Bharat Yatra Arogya Chikitsa Kendra’, a Rural Medical Referral Centre (RMRC) on 30th Dec. 1990, at a small village, Parandawadi near Pune. Novel idea of RMRC came to his mind during his participation in a historical walkathon ‘Bharat Yatra’, undertook by Shri. Chandrasekhar, former Prime Minister of India and Shri. Bhai Vaidya, a veteran socialist leader in 1983 from Gandhi Mandapam, Kanyakumari to Rajghat, Delhi, which he had joined as a doctor for one month and got unique opportunity to see miseries of rural India. It was during this ‘Bharat Yatra’ he realized that rural India certainly lacked primary health care but secondary and tertiary medical care was non existent. To meet this challenge he put forward the idea of RMRC, a specialist diagnostic centre run on weekly basis by practicing specialists from nearby town or city. The RMRC at Parandawadi provided highly specialized services of 25 medical specialists to rural folk from nearly 240 villages for eight years. During this period he also felt need of an organization which would take up various public health issues and fight for health rights of the common man. 

Latur Earthquake - a tragedy which became motivation...

Latur, a district from Maharashtra State, India was struck with a massive earthquake on a quiet night of 30th Sept. 1993, when tired villagers were fast asleep after a day long procession, at the end of the festival of Lord Ganesha, Hindu elephant headed god of intelligence, knowledge, strength and good luck. Even before they could wake up and run for their lives, thousands of villagers were buried under the rubble of collapsed houses, built traditionally in stone and mud.

After getting the news of the earthquake and possibility of around 10,000 deaths, help started pouring out from all the corners of the world. A medical team of RMRC rushed to Latur within 24 hours under leadership of Dr. Vaidya and conducted medical relief work in 10 villages.

An Idea is born...

Medial relief work during Latur earthquake was an eye opening experience. Due to lack of medical knowledge survivors could not help the victims and unfortunately government medical help reached very late. So if common man was given the knowledge of ‘Disaster Management and Medical Relief Work’ it would change the face of Disaster Management in our country, Dr. Vaidya thought. After coming back from Latur he put forward the idea of training common man in ‘Disaster Management and Medical Relief Work’ and organizing them into a national organization which he named ‘Arogya Sena’ (Health Army). The soldiers of this Health Army would rush in the events of disasters natural as well as man-made and would also take up various public health and social issues. This is how the idea of Arogya Sena (Health Army) was born!

Central Committee...

Click here to view the list of our Central Committee Members.