Solar hospital

Kamarul is a small village in southwest Bangladesh. Here, among the palms and flooded fields covered with water hyacinths, Dr. Haran Chandra Vokta brought about a miracle of sorts.

Haran built a small clinic - the only hospital in all of Bangladesh powered by energy from the sun. He said it is probably the only solar clinic in the entire world.

The hospital was financed 10 years ago by the UN Development Program. It cost the equivalent of about 10,000 euros ($15,000) at the time. It's a comparatively small investment with a big impact, since the roughly two dozen families living in Kamarul can finally be given medical care. They do not have to share the fate of the 100 million people living in rural Bangladesh without electricity.

The conditions in Bangladesh, which include rivers, water canals and flooded rice fields, make laying an electrical network almost impossible.

Operating better with solar power

Each day, around 30 patients are brought to the clinic by ambulance. Haran and his small team operate on three to six patients weekly, in what is likely the sole operating room in Bangladesh powered entirely by the sun. The doctor said he recalls that his staff had never had to resort to emergency energy sources in the nearly eight years since the installation of the solar processor.

Romjan Shareef visits the clinic regularly in order to donate blood.

"When my parents died, we could have only dreamed of such a clinic," Shareef said. "Now, we have one. As such, we must support it."

The hospital as an outdoor theater

Shushil Kuma Roi lives directly behind the clinic. The 65-year-old said he approved of the clinic's presence.

"A hospital right around the corner - what other farmer in Bangladesh has access to such a luxury?" Roi said. The solar hospital seems to exercise a kind of magical pull on the healthy inhabitants of the village.

Especially at night, when the solar-powered outer lights of the clinic light up the dark village, the small black-and-white television is a big attraction for the villagers. They are able to light the kerosene lanterns in their huts for only a few hours, as kerosene has become too expensive over the last few years. So when it gets dark in Kamarul, the square in front of the hospital transforms itself into a small outdoor theater.

Author: Thomas Kohlmann
Editor: Sabina Casagrande