City’s philanthropists help poor get best medical treatment

“When I heard about Bahadur from my friend RK Bajaj,I was moved by his plight. He was working as a watchman in the city and this way he was supporting his family back home in Nepal. I immediately decided to help him and collected small donations from my friends and relatives,” said Walia,about what triggered him to collect Rs 1 lakh for Bahadur’s treatment.

Walia is one of the many such Samaritans of the city who keep giving donations to the treatments of the poor patients whenever their appeals are flashed in the media reports or otherwise. There are others who are regular donors for the medical expenditures incurred by the poor patients of the city.

Breaking all notions that it is only the rich and financially strong patients who can opt for treatments in the tertiary care medical institutes,these people have been running the show from behind the stage. A few of them traced by the Newsline are Sudesh Kumar Khurana,Satwinder Bhandari,TS Lamba,Kamaljit Singh,Gyan Panthi Mandir trust of Raj Guru Nagar and Paramjit Kaur from Humbran.

Sudesh Kumar Khurana has been a regular donor at CMCH and donates money from time to time. “I do not have very huge wealth but I keep donating Rs 1,000 to Rs 2,000 for poor patients’ treatments whenever I learn about them,” he puts it humbly. “I do not believe in making donations to the temples or gurdwaras,there are a lot many who are doing it. I,therefore,give donations for the treatment of the poor patients who need the money most urgently,” he says. He has donated all his wife’s saving who had died some three years ago in making donations.

As for Paramjit Kaur,who has been running a beauty parlour in Humbran,she collects donations from her clients and donates the money to the CMCH. “It is an amazing city when it comes to generosity in donations. I have worked in various places in the country but never seen such a response anywhere in the country. People respond so enthusiastically to the appeals for help here that we are left overwhelmed,” says Dr Druv Ghosh,an assistant professor in paediatric department at Christian Medical College and Hospital.

“The other day I met somebody who said that he wanted to donate some money for the treatment of a patient whose appeal had appeared in the newspapers. He said to me handing over a sum of Rs 10,000,’I do not want any credit for it,just take this money and save the patient’,” narrates Dr Dhruv. So whether it was operation of a nine-year-old from Phagwara who was rushed to CMCH with a severe complication of bladder ashis,parents carried just a sum of Rs 500 to pay for the hospital expenditure that went up to Rs 1 lakh,or the treatment of a child for his bloated abdomen with his mother’s humble amount of Rs 250 which was all she had,all such patients have been provided help by the people from the city. About four per cent of the patients in the tertiary care centres in the city get the best of treatment with the help of donations received from all quarters.