It was the summer of 1994. A technician in a blood bank in a small village was busy separating the blood components before storing them so that several patients could benefit from a single blood donation.
This was a time when advanced medical technology had not yet caught up in the state and many blood banks in the country had not even heard of the technology to separate blood components.
The village was Puttaparthi in the ever-parched district of Anantapur and the blood bank belonged to the Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Medical Sciences. Right from its inception in early 1990s, the super-speciality hospital, a brain child of Sri Satya Sai Baba, provided the best medical facilities to the poorest of the poor.
“Did you visit the hospital? How are the facilities there?” the Baba had asked a team of visiting journalists from Hyderabad. The media team had just finished visiting the departments of the hospital and the Baba wanted to know whether the facilities needed to be upgraded.
The Baba’s vision was far ahead of the times. Donated blood, if separated into its components like plasma, red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets, can be utilised for a number of patients depending on their need. A patient may need just plasma and transfusing only plasma will help save other components, which can be utilised for other needy patients. Many hospitals realised its importance years later.
If the Puttaparthi hospital stands testimony to Sri Sathya Sai Baba’s unique medical vision, the water supply scheme in Anantapur district speaks of his selfless service to a people, whose district was gradually turning into a desert.
Sri Sathya Sai drinking water project is by far the largest-ever potable water scheme taken up by a non-governmental agency in the country. The scheme, with 750 km main trunk and 1,550 km branch lines, covers nine lakh people in 750 villages.