Five and a half years after the brutal killing of Australian missionary Graham Stuart Staines at Manoharpur, his dream project of a referral hospital was inaugurated in Baripada on Thursday.
"Today the first phase of Graham's dream is coming true. And though he is no longer with us physically, he is here in spirit," his wife and director of the project Gladys June Staines said.
The hospital would not treat leprosy patients only; it would be a general hospital open to all patients.
In the first phase, a 10-bed hospital has been constructed with family medicine service with laboratory facilities. It would focus mostly on the marginalised and the vulnerable and those bypassed by development in tribal villages of Keonjhar district.
Treatment at the hospital would also not be free as it would need to generate enough money to cover the running costs through user's will be charged on a no-profit-no-loss basis. "We will try to keep the charges as low as possible," she said.
Graham Staines had come to Orissa as a missionary in 1965 and worked at the mission stations at Rairangpur and Baripada till his death in 1999.
The missionary, along with his two minor sons – Philip and Timothy - were burnt to death while asleep in a station wagon at Manoharpur in Keonjhar district on the night of January 22, 1999. The incident had sent shockwaves through the country and outside.