LifeLine Express Train

Dumka, 9 am. A line forms at the station outside the hospital train. LifeLine Express brings free surgery to people far from healthcare. The medical team performs cataract operations for patients who cannot afford them.

LifeLine Express is a hospital that travels by rail and stops where healthcare is scarce. It settles for twenty five days and opens its doors to those in need. The first train began service on 16 July 1991. Today the consist has six carriages with medical equipment, two operating rooms, dorms for volunteers, a kitchen and offices.

Every two months, with support from sponsors and volunteer medical teams, a new destination is set. Each stop is organised by specialty. Eyes, ears, orthopaedics, plastic surgery and breast screening. Eye week is usually the busiest. In some locations between eighty and two hundred cataract surgeries are performed in a single day.

In Dumka the station fills early. First the check up, then the clinical decision and finally the operation. Vimali Mandal, sixty seven, left the theatre smiling. She could not afford a private hospital and now she can see again. Suboodh Jha, seventy two, waited two days. The surgery took fifteen minutes. He walked out drowsy and happy, saying he would finally see better.

Around twenty people keep the project running on board, from logistics to clinical teams. Project managers and surgeons work together to bring hospital care to places where it is difficult to obtain. As one doctor put it, people lose hope when treatment does not exist where they live.

After twenty five days the LifeLine Express moves on to its next destination.