Children between eight and fourteen years of age are working as Chinnari (small) doctors in Nizamabad district of Andhra Pradesh. They are not playing any game but the small doctors are giving treatments to patients with great care and advising them how to keep diseases away. The local “small” doctor is much in demand.

According to the report, children’s charity ‘Plan India‘ has trained as many as 320 small doctors to offer their services in 76 villages in the Nizamabad district.

Their work is preventive and advisory in nature and they concentrate high on giving villagers basic information about diseases and making them aware how to keep themselves away from the diseases. They teach people to maintain good hygiene in their houses because the lack of hygiene is the reason why millions of poor Indians contract gastrointestinal ailments.

Shailaja Vincent, program officer with Plan India in Hyderabad, said that these things are small but make a huge difference in our health condition. The small doctors, who received proper training from children charity ‘Plan India’, advise people that some of the age-old traditions of their elders are just impractical and these superstitions can make the difference between life and death.

These small doctors have been trained to treat minor disease and health problems such as diarrhoea, burns, snakebite, sunstroke and cuts and bruises. They are mainly responsible for about 10 to 14 households near their own home in the village where they live. They carry a white first aid case containing antiseptic cream, a nail cutter, scissors, bandages and hydrogen peroxide. The small doctors use the basic medical training what they learned through games and films in children’s charity Plan India.

The basic idea behind the Chinnari (small doctors) Project is not to help children doctors to treat minor health ailments but also to persuade youths to participate actively in the community’s affairs.