RC Agra Grand donates a cath lab for underprivileged patients

Realising the hardship and trauma suffered by ­ordinary people in meeting rising healthcare costs, ­particularly in diseases related to the heart, the Rotarians of RC Agra Grand, D 3110, decided to set up a Cardiac ­Catheterisation Lab in Firozabad, a small town in Uttar Pradesh.

The idea was to give the benefits of ­quality medical ­diagnosis and care to people from ­adjoining rural areas as the health facility — Sevarth Sansthan Seth Bimal Kumar Jain Trauma and ­Physiotherapy Dharmarth Samiti Centre — serves a huge rural population extending all the way to the city of ­Kanpur, located about 225 km away.

Thanks to the effort of the Rotarians from this club, the centre has been the beneficiary of a global grant project costing $63,750 (₹2.43 crore) through which a fully equipped state-of-the-art cath lab has been donated to this trauma centre. PDG Sharat ­Chandra, a member of this club and project head, said funds for the project were ­collected through an initial ­generous donation by Madanlal Goyal, whose family enterprise RDS Project Ltd gave a CSR contribution of $175,000. “At that time, he was not a Rotarian, but now he has become a member of our club, which had approached him for a generous donation and he obliged us. ­Thereafter, other members of RC Agra Grand donated for this project and there was a matching ­contribution from TRF’s World Fund,” said PDG Chandra.

He said the club had decided to do this project as ­cardiovascular diseases, especially coronary heart disease, have assumed epidemic proportions worldwide and significantly in India. Caused by smoking, diabetes, hypertension, abdominal obesity, psychosocial stress, unhealthy diet etc, the treatment is often beyond the means of common people. As a cath lab can do comprehensive diagnosis of such diseases, including ­coronary angiography to detect the cause of the heart disease, it was decided to get this equipment.

TRF Trustee Sushil Gupta inaugurated the cath lab, “and we have been assured by the ­hospital management that diagnostic facilities and treatment will be given at a very low cost to the people who can’t afford the high cost of private ­hospitals. They have also told us that treatment will not be denied even to those patients who cannot pay even a modest fee,” he added.

Chandra said that with Trustee Gupta insisting that the working of the cath lab should not wait for a formal inauguration, heart care services were started at the centre a few days before the ­formal inauguration.
He thanked TRF and ­members of his club — RC Agra Grand — for the ­successful ­implementation of the ­project. Gupta complimented the ­hospital for giving quality health care services to the poor and ­underprivileged at a highly ­subsidised cost.

R S Jalan, Managing ­Director, Gujarat Heavy ­Chemicals Ltd (GHCL), which has also donated ₹ 2 crore from its CSR funds for some other equipment at this ­centre, also participated at the meeting attended by PDG Rajiv Tandon, DGN Dinesh Chand Shukla and Rotarians Manmohan Saluja, Shiv Raj Bhargava, Ravi Prakash Agarwal and Lakshmi Kant Bansal.