 OK, welcom everybody. I think we're going to start. We may be joined by other people coming in, but that doesn't matter. We'll get going to keep on time. I'm delighted to have with me here today Dr Abbey Bang, who I first met several years ago through the work, the collaborative work that we were doing together and continue to do together with Save the Children, and that the organisation that Dr Bang founded together with his wife 26 years ago, an organisation called Search, which stands for the Society for Education, Action and Research and Community Health in an underdeveloped area in the state of Maharashtra. Dr Bang and his wife work with 120 villages to provide community-based healthcare but also critically to do research. They've developed a village healthcare programme, which has now become nationally and internationally famous model that has influenced healthcare policy both here in India and in many other countries around the world. I think part of that is because of the power of the research that has all been documented in publications like The Lancet. It's a very persuasive model, not only on the ground, but in terms of being able to prove that it really does work and it's affordable and can be scaled up. Dr Bang was also appointed as a member of the high-level expert group appointed by the Prime Minister here in India to prepare the blueprint of universal healthcare for India and may have some views on that if we have time. He was also anointed by Time magazine in 2005 as the global health hero. He's certainly one of my heroes and it's just a pleasure for me to be able to interview you. Dr Bang, I wonder if you could start by telling us a little bit about how you've managed to achieve these quite startling breakthroughs in terms of reducing child mortality rates. Particularly interesting in the context here, we are hearing about how India is failing to at the moment be on track for its Millennium Development Goal 4 to reduce by two-thirds the number of children dying before their fifth birthday. And yet you've been able to pioneer and prove a model that is bringing those rates down quickly. So can you tell us a little bit about what you've achieved and what you've learned? Thank you Jasmine. It's not the first time that we are getting late in India in this room, but we are late in even achieving Millennium Development Goals. And the delay that would happen in achieving MDG 4 would mean for India alone 2 million excess child death. So delay is a major factor. As you said mentioned earlier, the place where I work called Garichiroli, we are more known in India because of the Maoist activity and the violence in our district. It's a remote district, very poor, tribal, covered with forests and nearly 27 years ago Rani, my wife and I decided to go there and started this organization, our own search. After a few initial blunders, we realized that a doctor or a researcher should not begin with what he thinks is needed but must begin with what people think is needed. So we started organizing people's health assembly every year and then people told us what research we should be conducting. So one of the first four priorities that they mentioned, we mentioned, our children are dying. And around the same time, one very major but unfortunate thing happened that on one rainy season night, two tribal women knocked on our home and with a very sick child in hand. And within two minutes that I could examine, child had pneumonia, dehydration, malnutrition, two month old child and before I could do anything, the baby died. Now this woman and this child had come only from a distance of four kilometers from our hospital and I could still from their history, from their story, I could count that there were 18 causes why this child died. Distance, poverty, literacy, no bridges, no doctors, et cetera, et cetera. How can we save these children if there are 18 causes pitted against those helpless children? One solution that we could think of was if babies cannot come to hospital, hospital must go to where the babies were. And that's how this idea which was later on named as home-based newborn and child care that emerged. Why not train if doctors are not willing to go to villages? Why not train a literate village woman to become a newborn and child specialist of the village on the lines of barefoot doctor in China? And that's how we began first measuring child mortality, infant mortality rate as we measure the child death rate or infant death rate. The IMR was 121 at that time. Pneumonia and pneumon deaths were the most important causes of mortality. So we selected village women, we call them ROGADUT, which literally means messengers of health or angels of health. So these village women who are trained and certified by search, they go from house to house, educate mothers about how to take care of health, of their own health, of baby's health. When the babies are born they are present at the time of delivery, if it is home delivery, they start immediate breastfeeding. They take care of mother's health as well as baby's health and then subsequently provide support to newborn baby. As we all know, the first one month of life of a human being is the riskiest period in human entire life. And the risk of death is enormous. At that time it was 60 newborn babies died within first one month out of the total 1,000 babies born. Some of them were sick also. Now again, no doctor would reach there. So we had to train this village worker ROGADUT even to treat sick neonates, which was considered a very bold thing, a lot of medical opposition. How can you train semi-nutrate women to provide treatment to newborn babies? World Health Organization used to say in those days every sick newborn baby must be hospitalized, but there were no hospital within 300 kilometers of where we were working. This approach we conducted a rigorous field trial and it reduced newborn mortality rate by 70%. If reducing newborn mortality rate is considered a very difficult challenge, if you reduce by 5% in developed country it becomes headline in newspaper and television. Here it was reduced by 70% and in that area remote, difficult, poor, illiterate and still the infant mortality rate because of these women and the healthcare provided through these women, IMR reduced from 121 to 30. And mere coincidence, but India chose that as the national goal subsequently to reduce IMR to the level of 30 in the next 10 years. These women had achieved it ahead of the national goal. Now this method we published in the Lancet, Lancet not only published but later on selected this research as one of the vintage papers in the Lancet ever published in 180 years history. The main reason is that problem is not only local. Deaths of newborn babies and children, even today nearly 8 million children die worldwide every year. One and a half million die in India alone. So how to save them with limitations of hospital based approach. So this approach probably showed the way that no these newborn babies need not die and they could be saved. With this global need and the strong scientific evidence, it was picked up by journals, academicians, but also organizations like Save the Children and through a very good shake hand of search and Save the Children and later on with Government of India. This model was scaled up. So now this has become the national policy in India. Health Ministry has made a national program out of this and ASHA is a new community health worker in India. 800,000 ASHAs are being trained in this gradually model and how this is the bag. This is really the power bag which is used to empower that village woman community health worker. If you can see, there's a logo here, that woman who is in that home with a baby in her hands, helpless, her baby could be sick. But you empower that woman with some knowledge, some training and these equipments and she can go from house to house and she literally makes every home and hut turns the home and hut into a newborn care intensive care unit. Because the results are so dramatic. So this has now become not only a national model in India, but nine countries are emulating it in different parts and in 2009, WHO, UNICEF, USAID and Save the Children came up with a global guidelines that in developing countries where there is no access to hospital based care, this is the way to reduce newborn child mortality. So two questions following on from that great story. You mentioned opposition from the established medical profession. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Why wouldn't they want this to work? I mean we're all working on the same things here. And my second question is what's inside that power bag? That's a secret. The medical opposition was not so much because of Western interest because newborns in rural areas where nobody's Western interest. They were not providing business to anybody so nobody was going to lose business by training community health worker. It was more, a medical mindset always say, believes that only doctors can deliver best care and nobody else should ever deliver health care. This was in a way sort of violating those norms. But I must admit that the pediatrics leadership in this country had been very generous. It looked at the evidence, it looked at the national need and then subsequently pediatrics and the neonatalogist leadership of this country have vigorously supported this model. Now this bag consists of few equipments and things which altogether cost not much really just $30. But this is health education flip chart. We call it dialogue with mothers. This is almost like a knowledge vaccine. Using this, a mother can be educated by community health worker as to how to take care of her own health. This is a warm bag. Babies who are preterm, low birth weight or hypothermic. How to keep them warm at home in cold winter or rainy season? They don't have electricity, they don't have heaters, there are no incubators. So this warm bag like a sleeping bag, this keeps such babies warm. And then babies who are born at home, but who don't breathe immediately, they need immediate breathing support. If you don't provide them breathing support within next two minutes, they are dead. So this is called AMBU bag which is usually used by anaesthetists for emergency oxygenation of patients who are unconscious. She is trained to use this and give breathing support to baby. This is the weighing scale. So there are some equipments which allow thermometer weighing scale, which allow examination of the newborn baby. And some which allow to take care of the baby and keep baby warm, early breastfeeding, and then if it's sick, treat. And tell me a little bit more then about training these, as you say, illiterate women often in the village to be able to perform these functions. I've just come from the plenary session on missing women and in fact one of the points that came through was the status of particularly rural women. And how it's a problem on the one hand but also potentially a huge opportunity. Tell me about, you presumably see these women more of as an opportunity. Tell me about that. It's an enormous opportunity. And the type of women who can reduce child mortality, a problem with some, a government of India or society as a whole is unable to handle. And these women are able to handle. These women are mothers, grandmother, traditional birth attendant. And this new worker, as I mentioned, messenger of health or ASHA now at the national level. She's from the same village. She's not brought from abroad from outside. So she's not posted there. She's not paid salary. She's selected from the village. She's selected from the village. She's serving her own community. And she receives 26 days training. At the time of selection, we look for certain qualities, certain attributes, which is most important. Her literacy is not that important as their attributes are. So we look for certain attributes. After 26 days training, this training is divided into multiple small parts. So every month she receives three days training and then works in her own community. So her own community is practically her training laboratory where she weighs baby. She examines them, takes their temperature, talks to the men, explains them. That's how gradually over a period of one year her skills are built up. She goes through rigorous evaluation. A supervisor visits her once in every 15 days. And then finally, when she passes that evaluation, the training method standardised that we have standardised in that we found that 92% of village Arogeddut scored more than 70% marks. Here in India, I became doctor if I score more than 50%. But for Arogeddut, we have kept it a little higher. It has to be 70%. She's going to deal with sick babies. 92% Arogeddut performed extremely well. So this method of training is now standardised. And as I said earlier, 800,000 ashras in India are being trained using this method to provide home-based newborn and childcare at the doorstep in Indian villages. That's very impressive. So you mentioned about when you became a doctor. What is it that made you decide to take this slightly alternative route rather than becoming a highly paid consultant in a hospital or perhaps go overseas? What inspired you to take this route and to dedicate your life to this area of research and development? It's a little long story, but I'll cut it short. Nearly 65 years ago, my father who was a professor of economics. And he taught in one of Mahatma Gandhi's college. So he wanted to go to the US for studying economics further. Before leaving for the US, he went to see Mahatma. And then both to him asked for his blessings. And Mahatma Gandhi looked at him for just a few seconds and then said, If you want to study economics, go to the villages of India and not the US. Right there and then he tore away his travel documents, his admission papers in the US. And within one month, he started with his students. He went and started living in a village. So when I finished my medical education, post graduation, et cetera, et cetera, his words were still ringing in our ears. And commitment was that we must be able to provide health care to the villages of India. The unknown path did not know how to do that. Did not know even what the main problems were. And that's why when we went to Garichiroli, then we thought that if we anyway want to do this, let's go to the place which is least served, which is the most difficult. If something works here, it ought to work everywhere in India. So we chose Garichiroli. That's why we named our organization search. We didn't have answer. We were not lights. We were searching in the dark. So the place we live, our headquarter campus that we have started there, we call it Shodha Gram. Indians here would understand the word quickly. Shodha means again search. So it's a search village, searching in darkness. Now that's how my journey is. Look, my childhood was spent in Mahatma Gandhi's ashram. And that ashram is called Seva Gram, which in Indian language means a village for service. So I started from Seva Gram and ended up founding Shodha Gram. And you were fortunate enough to find a wife who clearly wanted to achieve the same things in life as you? Well, we were classmates. We fell in love with each other mainly because we had similar dreams. How wonderful. What a lovely story. So now tell me at the World Economic Forum, as you know, one of the big focus of discussions is around how multi-sector collaboration between different types of organisations, government, businesses and NGOs can work together. I believe you've got some thoughts in terms of how NGOs, organisations like Search can work together, particularly with business. Can you tell me about them? Look, for any collaboration, I believe that mere convenience is not enough. There must be matching of values and goals and then subsequent practical issues. So the first thing which has to occur, do the values and goals of corporate sector and NGOs match? That's a big question. And I think we must begin little bit philosophically there because without that clarification, mere convenient working together won't last. Charles Handy, who, I don't know whether he's still alive, but he was a very well-known management guru. He once beautifully said, he said that communism had a beautiful dream, but it did not know methods how to bring that dream into reality. And then he said, capitalism has wonderful methods, but it has no dream. And if capitalism has no dream, then we'll have to invent. Capitalism needs a soul. It needs heart. Later on, as the corporate social responsibility came into vogue, I think it's a very good beginning. It's a very good beginning, but there again that social responsibility remains peripheral for the corporation. The main job is earning profit. Michael Porter has recently written a cover story on Harvard Business Review and he has put forward this concept of shared value. To quote his words, he said we'll have to reform capitalism. Not only at the periphery, but the very purpose of capitalism probably has to change and it has to become shared value so that the corporates and the people, the customers, as well as employees, all they share similar value. To take this little back, I'm very surprised, but Mahatma Gandhi proposed something nearly 70 years ago which now Michael Porter and Bill Clinton and Bill Gates are equalling. He said that, look, a corporation or company has to be run like a public trust. A trustee of a public trust is dedicated, he's committed, he has passion, he works very hard, he or she, but he doesn't own it. Actually modern corporations also are more or less run in a similar fashion. The CEO or the managing director doesn't own that company, but still he runs with dedication and passion. So a little shift in the outlook that corporations companies need to be run like a public trust. Then that immediately can, it can reduce distance between NGOs and corporates and both may share similar value and similar goal. And there are n number of ways in which companies and NGOs can work together on social problems. We are talking a lot about India, economic superpower or fantastic growth story, et cetera, et cetera. But I'm sure business leaders here very much realize that unless economic growth is accompanied by inclusive growth and also social growth, the other way social problems can greatly undermine the economic story. It's not only about economic growth issue, it's also that health is a precondition for economic growth but more than that good health is the goal of growth. Why do we need money if you don't need health if you are not going to achieve health? So health is not a means for economic growth, it's an end for economic growth. So how can we work together? My all experience in the field of health, so naturally I'm going to take examples from the same field but one let me start from a small thing, as I said earlier, this is the power bag. And there are many such innovations and products which if scaled up through social marketing or through other ways which corporates would know better than I do. But if they are scaled up and made available in large number where they are needed, that could very rapidly reduce. So this bag for example at the moment is put together by your own organization, is it? It's not as if one company is contributing to creating it. No, we buy products from various other companies, we assemble them and search looks for certain quality and search has good credibility so people really use it. So it can be done by others as well but we don't have any sort of patent on it. But my point is that this kind of power equipments which will empower people for self care, for community based care so they don't have to wait for doctors and hospitals to either arrive or where they would never reach. And so propagating this kind of products and solution in large number, that's where skills and resources of corporates could be enormously useful. There are other ways in which they can help just for example providing service to one mother, newborn and child in a village would cost in Indian terms about 500 rupees per year, 10 dollars per year. So one mother, one newborn, one child and then depending on your economic willingness to offer one could adopt thousands of mothers, newborns and children, not feeding them yourself but empower them, empower those village women to take care of mothers and newborn children in their own village. So I would say multiply empowerment and then of course one could go even further. We have recently proposed model of universal healthcare for India at a very small cost, 0.5% of per capita GDP. At that cost one can provide universal healthcare at the village level. Which would mean about 4 lakh rupees per village per year, 400,000 rupees per village per year. And you can provide from self care, health education, community based care and primary health care and early secondary care. Everything can be provided at such smaller cost. So corporates can really join hands with NGOs, with the social sector, with organizations like Savory Children, so that we can multiply this process unless we achieve women's empowerment, unless we achieve knowledge, health literacy and unless we achieve what I use the word from Indian languages, ROGS, which literally means our health in our own hands. So we need to empower people for that and that can only ensure that Indians are healthy, young people are healthy, that only can ensure economic growth. That's a very compelling vision. I'm assuming you're optimistic then in terms of now that the government has taken on and committed to this new roll out of the breakthroughs that you have pioneered, that there is now a vision in place for universal health coverage. You obviously have great ideas for how corporates can contribute to that. Are you optimistic that India is now going to get itself on the right path and perhaps catch up towards meeting its Millennium Development Goal to stop children dying before their fifth birthday? Well India is certainly not going to achieve Millennium Development Goal by the year 2015, but I guess as far as the child mortality goal is concerned, we'll achieve it by let's say about 2020. So we'll be five years late, which would mean two and a half million excessive child deaths, which is unfortunately sad. But then there are many, many positive things happening in India. So even if we'll be late for Millennium Development Goals, but one thing I find is that education has empowered Indian women, girls and women to a large extent. The self-help group movement, especially in the southern part of India, up to Maharashtra, not so much to the north of Maharashtra, but in southern India up to Maharashtra, self-help group movement. And what Chavi was saying today, this representation of women at the grassroots political institutions called Panchayatraj institutions, these are silent changes occurring at the grassroots. You won't find much in the media. There is not much corruption in it. So there are no scandals. So it's not really flashed in the national headlines. But these are the changes which are going to change India. Let me mention two more things. One is youth, power of youth. And India is more endowed than any developed country as far as the power of youth is concerned. And if at all India will become superpower, that's not my dream, but I'm saying if at all India becomes economic superpower, it will be only because of the youth and women. And that's why, look, you can see my beard is grey now. So I know maybe after a few years, Rani and I may or may not be able to work, but we must create a new generation of young social change makers. So six years ago, we started a new organisation called Nirmann. And Nirmann really is trying to sensitize young professionals' youth from Maharashtra state to the social realities, social challenges. And trying to empower them and also encourage them to take up this mission. And nearly 50 youth in different parts of Maharashtra have already started working in different parts. So one solution at one level or only in Gaduchul is not enough. We need to multiply youth and education. These are the multiplicatory power. Now I must mention in the end, but apart from what we read about poor governance and corruption in the politics, which are major, major threats for India's growth story, but something other disturbing emerging is non-communicable diseases. Indians are dying at a very fast rate at earlier age because of coronary heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, et cetera, et cetera. One reason is our unhealthy lifestyle and another reason is consumption of tobacco. On a very large number, a small district Gaduchuloli with a population of only 1 million consumes 730 million rupees worth of tobacco every year. Look at the amount of economic loss plus the decisions that would create. So the changing lifestyle is a major threat to the health story of India. So we need to struggle on that front, but I'm very optimistic, especially because of women and youth of India. That's wonderful to hear you present women and youth as the opportunity for India in terms of its growth and its future and I think I would certainly agree with that and I think it's been coming through slowly but hopefully more powerfully in the sessions at the World Economic Forum more generally here in India. That's been really fascinating. You've covered a very large amount of ground in a small amount of time. If there was just one thing that you wanted to leave with us, what would that be? Well, when similar question was asked to Mahatma Gandhi, I'm just going to echo his words. So it's not my message. It's coming from him. And he said, be the change yourself that you want to see in the world. So all of us, whether social workers like me or corporates, must live the life that we wish we want the future to become reality and that reality starts happening. Wonderful. Thank you very much indeed, Dr Bang. That's been a pleasure to be with you. Thank you, yes ma'am. Thank you everybody.