Dr, Mapuskar an empathetic doctor has been working upon the sanitation and hygiene issues in the rural areas and villages for the last 50years. He had persistently worked hard for initially introducing the sanitation facilities in the village Dehu, Maharashtra and then for improving those facilities. During his working tenure in Dehu village his stay taught him a big lesson or we can call it an experience that brought wellness for the village and its people. Dr. Mapuskar was very young at that time and was just passed out from his medical college, on the first day of his stay he slept comfortably despite of the rumours that that hospital had ghosts roaming around at the night time. But nothing happened like that at all in fact the true terror was introduced to him when we looked for a toilet to get fresh the next morning, but there was no toilet at all in the hospital. He rushed to the forest and in the way he saw many of the familiar faces of the villagers going towards forests only to defecate. He felt really embarrassed and made a promise to himself that this was the first and last time. He did not want to face the same embarrassment thus, he made a temporary toilet by using the unused medicine cartons in the backyards of the hospital but that was not all, it was rather a beginning of a sanitation revolution in the village. Dr. Mapuskar sooner realized that most of the villagers were suffering from stomach infections since mostly patients coming to him complained against stomach pains. He realized that the problem of the villagers is long established and he has to find out the root cause of those infections. But before that he immediately tried to construct toilets in the village because so far he understood that one of causes of infections was the lack of sanitation in the village thus he bought a book published by WHO, ‘Excreta disposal in rural areas’. He then selected few designs from the book and constructed 10 toilets in the village but his efforts unfortunately were futile because sooner the toilets were collapsed due to heavy monsoon rain. But Dr. Mapuskar did not give up and he decided to organize an Infestation survey whose results were shocking for him. Survey was successful and got a 100% coverage of the households and he found that the sample of human excreta and soil sample had worm eggs and 86% of the population of the village was infected with worms. Now this was a challenge for him to eradicate this infection from the village and he needed to de-worm the villagers. For the de-worm medications he needed huge funding of about Rs. 10,000/- and would be repeated after every three months. Mapuskar also succeeded in convincing the villagers about the importance and utility of toilets this was a great revolution for sanitation and hygiene in Dehu village. At that time toilet construction would cost Rs. 400/- to which villagers agreed and deposited their share of money with the secretary. By the end of the year 1980, about 90% of the village was fully developed in terms of sanitation and hygiene around 100 toilets were constructed in a month. In the same year Dr. Mapuskar spread awareness about the Bio-Gas toilets developed by the Appasaheb Patwardhan. This time also he succeeded to convince the villagers for the construction of Bio-Gas toilets in the houses those who could afford since it was little expensive affair but was like an investment. Those toilets could be shared with the neighbours by charging Rs 5/- per month and with the sale of compost and generation of gas the family could earn Rs 700/- against the one time investment of Rs 1300/- . By the end of 1980 Dr. Mapuskar was successful in developing the Malprabha bio-gas toilet in the village. Mapuskar’s teams is still involved in working to introduce technology and improved methods for sanitation and hygiene in the village.
