Bengaluru: Dr Srivats Bharadwaj, founder, Vatsalya Centre, which provides oral health and hygiene round the clock, has unconventional views on healthcare, with greater emphasis on prevention than cure. “Doctors must be paid the highest amount of fee when the population is healthy and not when it is unhealthy. But sadly in today's scenario, the disease is creating more business for doctors and the preventive aspect has taken a hit,” Dr Srivats remarked.
His mission, however, includes making healthcare accessible to those in need and he makes it a point to reach out to any patient at any time of the hour. “We are the country's only dental care provider, which provides 24/7 emergency dental service like an ambulance and we get calls from patients at odd hours, but we reach out to them by going to the spot in the ambulance,” he said.
Dr Srivats Bharadwaj
“Primarily, I believe that a doctor is someone who should be available to his patients round the clock and at their doorstep. This inherent feeling is what I have applied into my practice,” he said.
The doctor focuses on reaching out to the homeless, destitute and children, who are in dire need of oral health check up and treatment, but are unaware of the same. His team recently reached out to 450 children in a government school in Tumakuru and treated the children of various oral complaints.
“It was facilitated by Rotary club Bangalore, but we self-funded the whole check-up, applied dental sealant, did the filling and cleaning,” Dr Srivats said. His team also runs various programmes round the year and have tie ups with NGOs working in the field of healthcare.
Vatsalya Centre is the sole dental care providers of an NGO called ENR, a Germany-based foundation. ENR funds heart surgeries to the poorest of poor from all over the country. “ENR foundation brings them to our clinic and we check their oral health and get rid of dental infections, if any, so that the heart surgeries are more successful,” Dr Srivats said.
His centre has also adopted children at Socare, an organisation that works for the welfare of the children of convicts. “We have adopted each child there and provide oral health check ups and needful surgeries, apart from educating them on the importance of prevention,” said Dr Srivats.
Vatsalya Centre also works towards providing oral healthcare to senior citizens and is attached to a few old age homes, including OM Ashram. Recently his team reached out to about 400 villagers of Kudur on Tumakuru Road and provided them dental care free of cost. “Those living in villages are in dire need of access to dental care and awareness,” he said.
“We have also adopted a place called Chittadhama in Kabani, which is a rehabilitation centre for homeless people with mental illness,” he said.
Dr Srivats wants the country to be free from problems of accessibility and affordability of treatment of various dental diseases. “My ultimate focus is also on ‘seal India’ - the prevention intervention programme to improve the dental health of the populace. Because oral health is overall health,” he summed up.
