Mohammed Abdul Wohab and Sabitri Pal, a lawyer and a teacher, have been extending a helping hand to the people of Sundarbans across 30 islands through their boat clinics.

The duo started SHIS Foundation (Southern Health Improvement Samity) in 1980 and share that they treat over 34,578 patients in a month.

There are four boats in total and the schedule for each is set every Monday. Throughout the week, the boats cover six blocks in the North and 13 in the South.

On Sundays, the team of doctors returns to the mainland where they stock up on supplies, medicines, rest and recharge for the next week.

Wohab was inspired to start this endeavour by a man named Grandjean Gaston, a nurse from Switzerland, who he saw reaching out to the people of the island during the floods of 1978.

“We found that there were only three doctors in the Sundarbans at that time and more than three lakh patients,” Wohab notes.

So the 79-year-old couple started by making trips to free clinics, collecting medicines and distributing these from a tea shop.

Through the weeks, people from across the Sundarban islands would come to get an antidote to tuberculosis, cold, cough and fever.

But when the patient numbers began to surge to an overwhelming peak, the couple was faced with the challenge of switching gears yet again.

The couple thanks the French writer, Dominique Lapierre, who was documenting the life of Gaston for his upcoming novel, for donating four fully-equipped boats and two mobile emergency ambulances.

And that is how the SHIS Foundation’s Boat Clinic was born. Each boat clinic includes two medical beds, a mobile X-ray, a small pathological unit, a medical store room, and an oxygen cylinder.

Since its inception, eight lakh patients have been helped by this innovation.

As Wohab explains, nothing is voluntary. The doctors and all medical technicians appointed for the boats are paid a salary. “This is to ensure that it is a continuation of service and the patients will not be stranded.”

The foundation reaches out to people through its tuberculosis control programme, an eye care hospital, a school for girls, a centre for disabled children to learn, and skill development programmes for the women of the Sundarbans.