{"id":963395,"date":"2026-05-16T08:09:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T08:09:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/963395\/"},"modified":"2026-05-16T08:09:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T08:09:11","slug":"the-handsworth-volunteer-run-health-centre-which-has-saved-the-nhs-6m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/963395\/","title":{"rendered":"The Handsworth volunteer-run health centre which has &#8216;saved the NHS \u00a36m&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Nearly three-quarters of volunteers are Sikh but there is a multi-faith mix of helpers, with 20 doctors and consultants and more than 25 pharmacists.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s a labour of love&#8230; it&#8217;s something that you do because you care and you want to make that difference,&#8221; added Dr Kalirai.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The dental practice runs 700 consultations a year, with patients encouraged to pay what they can, while the pharmacies deal with 185,000 prescriptions each year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Patients like Rajinder Singh Bhogal, 65, who has ulcerative colitis, describe the passion and support of the centre&#8217;s volunteers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A doctor spent about 45 minutes with him  when he suffered a prolonged bout of severe stomach pain.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The advice and the help that I got was really, really supportive and pointed me in the right direction,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It took about eight weeks for the NHS to discover the discomfort was being caused by ulcers, and he said if he had not visited NHT, &#8220;it would have been a lot longer&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nearly three-quarters of volunteers are Sikh but there is a multi-faith mix of helpers, with 20 doctors and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":963396,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7820],"tags":[855,748,393,4884,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-963395","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-birmingham","8":"tag-birmingham","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116583240422542684","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/963395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=963395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/963395\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/963396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=963395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=963395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=963395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}