Biswajit Chanda, a 30-year-old labourer, was worried that it might take him years to pull together money for his son's cleft lip surgery, but a train that chugged into Tripura's Churaibari station last month brought smile back on his two-year-old boy's face. Chanda happens to be just one among 8,000 cases attended over the past 20 days by Lifeline Express - a hospital train that travels to inaccessible rural areas where medical services are limited.

Set up by NGO Impact India Foundation and Indian Railways and Ministry of Health in 1991, the express train has conducted 199 heath camps in different parts of the country since its inauguration. "Lifeline Express arranged for my accommodation and food for a week and performed the surgery on my son without any cost," said the 30-year-old daily wage labourer, who hails from Nandigram village in neighbouring Assam. Anil Premsagar, the joint director of the hospital train, said 1200 patients have undergone cataract operation in the first two days.