The true oath

Inspiring story in the outlook about urban educated doctors going into rural areas in India and providing much needed medicare.

These highs and lows are woven into the daily life of a very small number of doctors scattered across the country who've opted to offer cheap, high-quality care to rural populations caught between "quackery and crookery", as Prof Amartya Sen once put it. In settings like Ganiyari, or Sittlingi in rural Tamil Nadu, where doctors Regi George and Lalitha Regi work among adivasis, you see doctors as you may never have done: non-intimidating, empathetic, humbled by their patients' struggle to make a living off the land; maintaining detailed case notes for the hundreds of patients who flock to their clinics.