Zelma Lazarus (1936-2022): Creator of the Lifeline Express hospital train touched a million lives

“Stick your neck out” Zelma Lazarus once told me during a raucous Christmas party at her Carter Road apartment. “You have nothing to lose.”

I was all of 16 years old and heady from the wine that was flowing around her sunny, windswept apartment on the ninth floor of a Mumbai highrise with an unobstructed view of the Arabian Sea, save for some coconut palm trees that she had planted in the garden that fronted the building decades ago. They were, and still are, the tallest palms I have ever seen. I was accompanying my mother, a close friend and long-time associate of Lazarus.

We were talking about my plans once I graduated from high school. She wanted me to get involved with her brainchild, the Lifeline Express, a hospital train that provided emergency medical care in remote and underserved regions of the country. The Lifeline Express or Jeevan Rekha, as it was known locally, was a joint initiative of Indian Railways, the Health Ministry and Impact India Foundation, an organisation that Lazarus founded in 1983 with active support from the United Nations Development Program, World Health Organisation, the United Nations Children’s Fund, and most prominently, the Tata group.

The story of how the Lifeline…

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