RC Spic Nagar provides comprehensive healthcare
RC Spic Nagar, RID 3212, on its 47th year of charter, has various ongoing service projects, with major focus on providing healthcare.
More than 100 children are living a healthy life thanks to the annual paediatric heart camps being conducted by the club since the past five years. The club, in association with the Tuticorin Public Welfare Centre, organises cardiac screening camp for infants and young children and sponsors corrective surgeries for needy patients at the Apollo Hospitals in Chennai. “We take care of the entire cost including travel, accommodation, food and hospitalisation,” says the club’s past president Radhakrishnan.
Its artificial limb and mobility aid distribution camps have benefitted at least 300 physically-challenged people in the last five years. The limbs are manufactured and provided at subsidised cost by Rotary Coimbatore Midtown Artificial Limb Centre. Technicians from the centre visit the camp and take measurements from beneficiaries for artificial limbs, and provide support in fitting the limbs and training the users to walk. Each year the club spends ₹5 lakh for this initiative. The beneficiaries are identified by the Tuticorin District Rehabilitation Centre for the differently-abled and the Paralympic Association.
This year the camp was organised with global grant support from RC Melawati, Malaysia, RID 3300. A M Foundation, Chennai; SPIC and Greenstar Fertilisers partnered with the club. SPIC’s wholetime director S R Ramakrishnan and COO E Balu presided over the camp which benefitted around 80 people.
The club, in association with the Aravind Eye Hospitals, organises eye camps, sponsors cataract surgeries and distributes prescription spectacles for the underprivileged every year. General medical camps and blood donation camps twice a year are its other long-running healthcare programmes.
“Schoolchildren look forward to our science exhibition every year. We have been organising it for several years and 400 students participate,” says club president Mutharasu. The club has been hosting an annual RYLA for the past six years. It has a participation of at least 50 girls from 10 colleges.
