The world's premier hospital-on-rails, the Lifeline Express promoted by Impact India Foundation, that has arrived after having completed its hectic 56th project from Bolangir, a small district in Orissa, is now planning to go big by embarking on a new pilot project titled 'Disability Reduction Project' scheduled to commence early next year.

According to Zelma Lazarus, chief executive officer, Impact India Foundation, the new project would be a part of our goal to do away with the incidence of disability in the country. "For this we have benchmarked three states Orissa, Maharashtra and Karnataka as the referral states. Beginning with Orissa, we would be working to reduce the incidence of existing disability by almost a half," she said.

The new project will be implemented with the help from the government of Orissa along with the financial aid from UNDP and UNICEF. In the first phase, the Foundation would identify all pregnant women from around the state who would be referred to the various primary health centres for health check-ups. Following this, their health would be monitored on a regular basis for close to one and a half year and a data of their status would be entered into the computer system after every periodic check-up.

Simultaneously, each woman would be required to administer some medicines as a preventive step to control any instances of disability. Once the child is born, similar treatment would be meted out to him and an entry of the procedure made into the system. This would be followed for almost a year and a half till the child is declared free of any disability incidences.

"With such a move atleast we could keep a check on the future incidences of disability, and restrict its occurrence", says Lazarus.

The Lifeline Express, established in July 1991 by Impact India Foundation, an international initiative against avoidable disablement is currently into its eleventh year of service. Till date, the mobile hospital along with the donated time and skills of close to 50,000 medical experts has restored sight, movement, hearing and correction of cleft lips to more than 3 lakh rural poor through 56 different projects.

After Mumbai, the Lifeline Express is all set to cruise on to its 57th project at Chhattisgarh, which is scheduled to begin on November 13, 2002.