About us
The Institute for Rural Health Studies (IRHS) was established in 1981 by Dr. Patricia Bidinger (Pat) and Mrs. Bhavani Nag to research the agricultural and socio-economic determinants of health and nutrition in rural villages.
The research included data on income, expenditure, harvest, labour force participation with a major emphasis on physical health and individual food consumption on forty households representing landless labourers, small, medium and large families. It became suddenly evident to Pat and Bhavani that villagers struggled to access even the most basic healthcare.
One day a young woman came to them saying, “Amma, we don’t mind answering all your questions about how many hours we work in the fields or showing you how much we each eat or letting your doctor examine our bodies, but Amma, why don’t you do something useful. My baby is sick.”
This was a turning point in their careers and they decided to provide healthcare as well carry out research. Today, through research, IRHS designs and implements programmes that provide curative and preventive healthcare and access to secondary and tertiary-level facilities.
Dr. Pat was chosen as an early Ashoka fellow (1991) with her Travellers' Aid for the Sick project based in Hyderabad's central bus terminal. In 2003, IRHS won the citizen based investment award for two charitable pharmacies set up and managed at the Nizam's Institute for Medical Sciences (NIMS); a semi-autonomous hospital in Hyderabad. Profits went to pay for investigations and treatment of poor, rural patients who otherwise would have had no access to sophisticated tertiary care.