The news that Arunachal Pradesh for the first time  is going to get the services of Lifeline Express, the world’s first hospital train is really big and exciting one if placed in context of the overall medical facility availability scenario of the state. If this will usher hope for hundreds of medical relief seekers, an unavoidable distress also visits along with, which will centre around the fact, or a wish rather, that had the railway network in the state been more expansive, more people would have received the benefits. The shortcoming that the geographically largest state in Northeast is having such a limited railway penetration is bound to arrive and hit everybody hard. But there is no option but to live with this harsh reality.
Lifeline Express also admiringly called as Jeevan Rekha Express  has been alive since 1991 and is doing a wonderful  job by concentrating its activities, all full free, in inaccessible rural areas where medical services are not available to the desired extent or even not at all in many cases. For a vast country like India with a dense population, more than half of which can’t still afford quality medical treatment, it’s something Godsend and depth of its services can be measured from the fact that not just simple cases, even major ones like critical surgeries, dedicated cancer treatments are also conducted. It has earned accolades not just by their one-time services through halts, but also by playing the role of an encouragement-giver to local health infrastructure and services to upscale their efficiencies so that follow-up treatments can be of desirable levels. Going by an estimate which takes into account its activities till August 2019, the live-saving train had travelled across 19 states, covered more than 200 rural locations  in 138 districts,  provided  medical treatment to more than 12 lakh patients and had performed more than 1.46 lakh cases of surgery. And Arunachal hadn’t figured in the above statistics only because it had been very late to be included in the national railway map of the nation.
Arrival of Lifeline Express is also the arrival of a great reminder that Arunachal must have a more extended railway network. This is a real necessity and the entire economic ecosystem is not getting the correct dose of encouragement due to lack of this factor. A patient desperately needing medical attention, supposedly in a far-flung border district will lament since it will be quite strenuous to reach Naharlagun to avail these medical services. The same feeling will emanate from his or her farmer counterpart whose sorrow is that there is little communication infrastructure to ensure the produce reach markets.
Railway tracks are the veins through which development flows. Central government must take a further notice of this need of Arunachal and act faster.  

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Kenter Joya Riba

(Managing Editor)
      She is a graduate in Science with post graduation in Sociology from University of Pune. She has been in the media industry for nearly a decade. Before turning to print business, she has been associated with radio and television.
Email: kenterjoyaz@easternsentinel.in / editoreasternsentinel@gmail.com
Phone: 0360-2212313

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