Log in to your Account

Stolen Innocence: How One Doctor at Duncan Hospital Is Confronting Childhood Addiction with Love That Multiplies

Rahul* presented like nearly every other pediatric patient who had walked into Dr. Blessy Sucharita’s exam room over the last 15 years at Duncan Hospital in Raxaul, a city in Bihar, India. No fractures. No fevers. No obvious medical condition.

“What’s wrong?” she asked Rahul’s mother.

“Addiction,” the woman whispered.

“How long has he been drinking?”

“Since he was four years old.”

Years of clinical practice had given Blessy the skill to hide the emotional gut-punch she felt at the mother’s reply.

It didn’t take long to unravel the story. Poverty had forced Rahul’s mother to give him cheap liquor when she couldn’t afford enough food. If he was drunk, at least he could sleep instead of crying with hunger. Now ten years old, Rahul was already an alcoholic.

How easy it would have been, Blessy thought, to blame the mother. But she knew that the harsh realities of poverty, abuse, and deprivation had left the woman with little choice. She was as much a victim as her son. Still, someone had to intervene. And in this case, Blessy was the only someone who might be able to help.

But how do you write a treatment plan for a ten-year-old alcoholic?

Treating children like Rahul had not been part of Blessy’s plan when she enrolled at Christian Medical College in Vellore, one of India’s top medical schools. Back then, she envisioned herself immigrating to the United States, where her brother worked, and treating patients with excellent health insurance, supported by a team of leading professionals at a top academic center.

“I never thought about helping other people,” she admitted. “In medical school, it was all about me.”

But then she visited rural North India, a neglected part of the country, where she glimpsed overwhelming need and unimaginable poverty. What looked like barriers to progress to others seemed like opportunities for transformation to Blessy. “I realized it wasn’t all about me and my career,” Blessy said. “God was telling me very clearly what to do with my degree: Go to North India.”

That was when she decided to dedicate the rest of her life serving patients in mission hospitals.

It has now been 15 years of walking by faith—a challenging yet deeply satisfying journey at Duncan Hospital in Raxaul. A dusty town on the Indo-Nepal border, Raxaul is rich in culture yet scarred by poverty. In Blessy’s hometown, people had easy access to hospitals and medical professionals. But here, you could travel 400 miles or more without seeing a single doctor.

A pediatrician by training, Blessy threw herself into the work at Duncan Hospital, tackling a dizzying variety of diseases and diagnoses. While many children attended school, others, like Rahul, had no access even to basic education. On any given day, Blessy could spot a dozen unattended children— searching through trash heaps or numbing hunger with glue.

Seeing the gap in care, Blessy pursued an additional specialization in psychiatry. She divided her days: pediatrics in the morning, psychiatry in the afternoon. But nearly 900 patients poured through the hospital’s doors every day. The hospital was known for its ethical Christian values, and people traveled hundreds of miles just to experience its care.

Working in a place with such overwhelming need, severe illnesses, limited resources, and sometimes hostile communities was not easy. Soon, Blessy was on the brink of burnout.

Then she and her husband were invited to TMS Global’s Maclin Training. “When we went into missions,” Blessy said, “we had no idea what was expected of us. That training was a real eye-opener.”

For the first time, she could admit that loving the people was the hardest part of the job—especially when they were ungrateful, and sometimes even resorted to mob violence or vandalism. “What is the point of our sacrifice if people don’t value our work?” she asked herself.

But after Maclin, something shifted. “I started to understand the people here,” Blessy said. Before, her questions were harsh: Why don’t they value girls? Why are they rude, arrogant, difficult?

Now she had some answers: “All their lives, these patients were suppressed. They had no parents or schools to teach them courtesy. I can’t expect them to be smiling and thanking me. I began to place myself in their shoes and realized that they are not bad people, just different.”

Through Maclin, Blessy also began to understand why she served. I Corinthians 13:3 made it clear: If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

“Initially, we worked constantly, but it was for humanitarian reasons,” Blessy explained. “After Maclin, after understanding God’s love and mission more deeply, we don’t just work for people—we love them. In fact, when we visit easier places with gentle people, we miss our friends and neighbors back in Bihar.”

Most importantly, she discovered that God was always at work. She didn’t have to change anyone. She could share Christ in ways that were meaningful to her patients and leave the outcome to the Holy Spirit. With this transformed perspective, Blessy began addressing the issues her patients faced—including Rahul and his friends.

Once the magnitude of childhood addiction became clear, Duncan Hospital began piecing together a response. Blessy recruited and trained local helpers—not graduates, just men and women with a tenth-grade education—who began walking through neighborhoods, identifying school dropouts, and visiting homes. This was the first step of their approach.

They started small: offering food at the hospital, befriending a child, warning parents about the dangers of gambling and glue-sniffing. They would trace one boy, and that boy would lead to five more. Slowly, the circle widened.

Today, the team follows up with 25–30 children regularly. These children are encouraged with incentives to attend school. Families receive counseling on raising children. Fathers are guided through addiction recovery programs. Some families are given livelihood projects through the hospital. A few young girls have been rescued from trafficking and placed in homes where they can study.

None of it is tidy. Progress is fragile, and setbacks are daily. But love has a way of multiplying.

Blessy reflects, “I used to think I had to save all the children in front of me, and this was draining me. But then I realized—if even a few are saved and transformed, that itself is God’s miracle.”

He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.
Psalm 147:3

*Not his real name