Awareness on healthcare facilities can rescue lives: Dr Guru Shankar

Chennai: V. Mohana Priya, a 3-year-old girl was suffering from fatal cancer; ‘Hemophagocytic Lymphohistiocytosis (HLH)’ that rarely affects children. The doctors lost their hope and it was only then, her pregnant mother Mrs Venu took her to the Madurai’s Meenakshi Mission Hospital (MMH) where successful stem cell transplantation was done free-of-cost, the donor being her unborn sister.

Almost 2000 children with various complications were given a new lease of life through charitable programs offered by the 30-year-old healthcare provider.

The disease is democratic and it never differentiates between the rich and poor, the urban and rural. It has the same effect on everyone. The problem is that there is a great gap in access and quality of the treatment. In order to create equality in medical access and treatment, a new initiative ‘Aram Seidhu Pazhagu’, was started by Dr Guru Shankar, chairman, MMH,

“Uma Narayan from a remote village in Dindigal was very much distressed when she couldn’t treat her child with cleft lip and come to us. The girl was brought back to normal after giving free treatment, Child’s father had committed suicide not being able to get her treated. This incident was an eye-opener to us,” said Dr Guru.
There is an urgent need to encourage medical entrepreneurs to set up more multi speciality hospitals in the country as the projected shortage is 5 million hospitals by the year 2020 as per a Mc Kinsey report.
“More multi-specialty hospitals must be built so that the patients have access to all the departments at low cost, thereby giving total health care when compared to normal hospitals. People must be aware of the free medical services they could avail,” said Dr Guru.