Shakyamuni Buddha Community Health Care Clinic (SBCHCC) began in 1991 as a destitute home within the grounds of Root Institute, as one of its social service projects, and has evolved into a community health care programme with a wide range of medical and rehabilitative services and community-based health educational activities.
The clinic operates six days a week with a full-time employed team of 17 personnel consisting of doctors, nurses, physiotherapists and support staff, in addition to visiting doctors.
With kindness and compassion, every month our clinic staff care for between 2,000 and 2,200 patients.
From time to time they are assisted by allied health professionals – mostly physiotherapists and acupuncturists – who visit Root Institute and offer their services voluntarily. Currently, we have a volunteer acupuncturist.
Our major services
Homeopathic out-patient clinic
We have four full-time homeopathic doctors providing free consultation and treatment to the patients, supported by our free homeopathic pharmacy distributing the prescribed medicines.
Pharmacy
The centre has well-equipped allopathic and homeopathic pharmacies that distribute free medication to patients.
Allopathic clinic
We also have a allopathic doctor visiting once a week.
Dental clinic
We have a fully-equipped dental clinic treating the dental problems of the local population. Currently, a dentist visits twice a month (recently reduced from weekly due to lack of funding).
Physiotherapy clinic
Serving the patients referred by both our allopathic and homeopathic departments, we have a full-fledged physiotherapy department with exercise equipment and two full-time physiotherapists. Both these trained professionals offer therapeutic treatments to patients suffering from cerebral palsy, joint pains, paralytic stroke, and various other ailments.
Mobile clinic
A homeopathic doctor and a nurse travel up to 50 kilometres from our central clinic in Bodhgaya to offer mobile clinic services once a week to each of five rural centres, dispensing free medicine. The mobile clinic team is also joined by a physiotherapist four times a week.
Health education for adolescent girls
Through this program twice in a month young adolescent girls are supported to come to SBCHCC center where our health educator conducts a detailed educating session about hygiene and health, and address any queries and questions they have.
HIV support and awareness programme
For local people living with HIV, we provide continuous comprehensive support including consultation with doctors, nutritional advice, counselling, and medication.
Our impact in the community
The total number of people who benefited from our various programmes in 2017 alone was 49,133:
- 27,110 people received free medical consultation
- 13,992 people benefited from the mobile clinic
- 6,373 people received physiotherapy treatment
- 1,223 people were treated by our visiting dentist
- 350 HIV patients received nutritional and health guidance
- 85 patients received free consultations from a women's doctor
- 32,168 people (who also received various treatments, above) benefited through our health education talks both at the clinic and mobile clinic centres.
Looking to the future
With sufficient funding we will be able to fulfil our immediate aims:
- to have a new SUV to enable mobile clinic services (over rough country roads)
- to have a full-time allopathic department
- to increase the number of monthly visits of the dentist
- to have a fully-operational in-patient section for high-risk patients.
If you feel inspired by our work, we would welcome any donation, large or small, to help sustain and expand it.
As we aspire and work towards providing holistic health care, we also wish to formulate and deliver programmes to empower our local communities. There are multiple underlying factors at the community level that contribute to illness and disease. We wish to build further awareness and self-reliance to develop a healthier, happier community.