Chennai: Crowd funding helps many meet huge medical bills
With the help of a doctor, however, they started an online campaign for Vivash and were able to raise the required amount.
Chennai: When six-year-old Vivash was diagnosed with cancer that required around Rs 25 lakh for his treatment, it signalled a crisis in the family.
After having spent around Rs 15 lakh on his treatment, the family ran out of sources for funds. However, they needed another Rs 10 lakh for chemotherapy.
With the help of a doctor, however, they started an online campaign for Vivash and were able to raise the required amount.
With treatment and transplants costing a bomb, many tend to burn a hole in their pockets.
With the concept of crowd-funding, a number of rare, urgent and extremely expensive medical cases have been undertaken without leaving the families financially dry.
With an aim to ensure that patients, irrespective of their monetary background, can access essential quality medical facilities, Milaap, the country’s largest crowd-funding platform, has established partnerships with hospitals, especially in the city, which is a hub for medical tourism, to help patients.
In the case of Vivash, Dr Snehalatha from Sri Ramachandra Medical Centre helped the family set up an online campaign, which helped the family successfully raise enough for the treatment.
“Great strides have been made in the field of medicine to cure genetic diseases such as thalassaemia major and primary immune deficiency. Public hospitals cannot provide niche area services to children with rare diseases as resources required would be enormous. Why deny world-class treatment to our own children based on the fact that they cannot afford the care? Now, the public private partnership has helped bridge this gap in a big way. Crowd-funding is an innovative method to help achieve uniform healthcare for all,” said Dr Revathy Raj from Apollo Specialty Hospital.
“Crowd-funding for medical needs is not only limited to people from the lower socioeconomic strata. Sixty-four-year-old Saraswathi, diagnosed with breast cancer, had a sudden, unexpected infection towards the end of her treatment and had to be shifted to ICU for 10 days. Her insurance was able to bear the cost of her treatment, but the additional cost was too much for the family to bear. They therefore resorted to crowd-funding for funds.”