Field research

It all started in the ’70s when Dr Banoo Coyaji,eminent gynaecologist from KEM Hospital,Pune,decided to provide health services to the villages of Maharashtra through the Vadu Rural Health Programme. As part of the programme,the 30-bed Shirdi Saibaba hospital came up with 24/7 emergency obstetric services,a state-of-the-art operation theatre and other services. In 2002,the focus expanded to include research when Dr Siddhi Hirve,who was instrumental in setting up the Centre, got research funds from the Bill and Melinda Gates Institute for Population and Reproductive Health and Johns Hopkins University to track health,disease and death in 22 villages of Pune district. And villagers were a key part of this project.

“When we started,the sole criterion for the job of a field researcher was that the applicant should be able to read and write basic Marathi,” says Dr Sanjay Juvekar,officer in charge of the Vadu Rural Health Programme. Now,of the 150-odd people who work at the Vadu Research Centre,least 90 are locals,says Juvekar.

Shivale,who has studied till class XII and did several odd jobs in the village before joining the Vadu Rural Health Programme,is now working on the second phase of the ambitious Ayur-Genomics project. The project,conducted by the Vadu Centre in association with Delhi’s Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology,is among the many research studies that are being done at the Centre,including influenza studies and HIV-Ca Cervix studies.

Shivale earns Rs 8,600 a month and is happy with his job profile. “As part of the study,we have to survey 10,000 people,provide questionnaires and list their medical details,” he says.

Jyoti Bhosure,27,travels 7 km from the adjoining Dhanore village to the Centre,where she works as a senior field researcher. She has studied only up to class XI,but is now busy monitoring a survey that is being done to understand the burden of influenza on the community. “I earn Rs 10,000 and am now encouraging other women to study and enlist themselves in the women’s savings group. We must learn to be financially independent and this job has certainly helped me,” says Bhosure.

Madhavi Nikhal,who did a nursing course after her class XII,prefers to work at Vadu though she had got a job in the paediatrics section of KEM hospital in Pune,where she lives. “I don’t mind travelling back and forth as there are so many challenges here,” says Nikhal,who is working with researchers as part of the rota virus vaccine project.

Apart from the villagers,the researchers working at the Centre say they don’t mind the daily travelling they do to get to the Centre. It takes Rutuja Patil,a biotechnologist from Pune University,an hour to get here,but she says it is worth the effort. “I have been given charge of developing the laboratory and it is an exciting phase,”says Patil.

Like her,Dr Diana Kekan,a clinical physician,travels from Pune to Vadu,but says the space the Centre gives researchers is unlike any other. “We are given full freedom to write research proposals and secure grants and fellowships,”says Kekan,who is working on a project on the typhoid vaccine.

Somnath Sambhudas,who lives at Pabal village,18 km from Vadu,earlier worked as a data entry operator. He is now the backbone of the data systems network at the Vadu Centre. He works from home to develop a software,the INDEPTH network that links the Vadu Centre to 42 sites in 19 countries on health solutions. The software aims to display demographic reports and can help scientists assess birth/death rates and other patterns at these sites,says Sambhudas,who has just returned from Mozambique as part of a training programme.