Cath lab to save children
The Rotary Club of Raipur Greater, D 3261, recently installed a paediatric heart catheterisation lab at the Sathya Sai Sanjeevani Hospital in Naya Raipur, Chhattisgarh. The equipment, imported from Indonesia and the Philippines, are worth Rs 3 crore and the club took support of a global grant from RC Fort Wayne, D 6540, the USA and TRF.
The cardiac cath machine will evaluate heart defects in children with congenital heart disease, check blood flow in the coronary arteries and blood pressure in the heart’s chambers. Often, a cardiac catheterisation can make open-heart surgery unnecessary, saving fatalities in children.
The hospital provides free treatment for all children with cardiac disorders. “There is no cash counter in the hospital,” says Club President Vivek Ranjan Gupta. But where a cath test was required, the child was referred to other hospitals which charge “anything between Rs 10,000–20,000 for the test.”
RI Director C Basker, who inaugurated the lab, appreciated the team for bringing quality healthcare within reach for the underprivileged and recognised the club’s efforts in giving the community what it needed the most.
“The facility is totally free for the poor. Poverty should not be a reason for not providing proper medical care for ailing children,” says Assistant Governor and IPP of the club, Raj Dubey. District Governor Harjit Singh Hura, Hospital Chairman C Sreenivas, PDG Vivek K Tankha, DRFC Rakesh Chaturvedi and ARRFC Vinod Bansal, were present at the inaugural event, along with past governors, and Rotarians from the international partner club.
The major donors for the project were Dr Praveen Kollipara, an oncologist from Fort Wayne and Vital Paper Industries, Bengaluru. The project, conceived in 2015, was coordinated by club member S K Agrawal. “RID Basker has suggested us to provide more facilities, whatever is lacking, for the hospital and we are working on it now,” says Gupta.
