Mission Medico : Hungry Bicycle

Becoming a Doctor is by no means an easy task because of the difficulties of chakravyuh that you have to clear to get admitted to the college then study theory and practical over the next 5 years and become a basic doctor with a graduate degree like MBBS and then continue further to become MD and DM or MS and then MCH.

This is common and difficult to be overcome by all students but when I hear the affluent students planning for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday pleasure trips or travels or attending musical concerts or joining parties or birthday celebrations where they spend money as medical students for us was enough for the whole month.

It is good that the affordability of the parents has increased and children get benefits but the grass is not green all around.

I want to share with you an experience this week where I learned that a student who is good at studying and got 64%+ in his first MBBS is having a financial problem.

Medical books worth 12 to 15000 which are required to be studied as a part of the curriculum for preparing for the subject was a difficult proposition for a student whose father has an income of only 36000 per year as certified by the mamlatdar of the taluka from which he came to study.He fortunately got the books as gifts from his teachers who contributed money. He as well as some of his friends got the books.

I therefore felt that he would not require any help from us.

When I inquired about his daily routines, I came to know that because of the financial issues he was taking one or two bananas only in the morning as lunch and a single dinner at night to save money. He had to sell his bicycle for genuine reasons and came to my clinic with a friend's vehicle.

I now realize problems are deeper than I thought, so coming to know about the meal and the transportation issues, I thought we could contribute at least towards the food and bicycle and gave him a small amount of donation to temporarily improve his situation.

We thought of buying a new bicycle from the market but then just got an idea why not ask our donors who have been donating 8 chair dining tables, cupboards, TVs, and whatnot, for the benefit of the deserving students or 300 challenged persons or schools or residential schools where we help. Dear donors did an excellent job by offering to gift the used cycle in good condition recently maintained by the authorized persons to the student in less than 24 hours!

While we wanted one, we already have received the donation desire for five bicycles from normal to geared to various stages.

I have yet to collect and distribute one of the cycles to begin with to this student but what I am happy about is that there are so many large-hearted Donors who are with us in the activities of the CC Buch Public Charitable Trust.

Is also very heartening to know that one may be able to help and help like the teachers did, but when the magnitude of help required is bigger, referring to somebody to help also is a donation and people who donate attention, time, or money can change the lives of students, some of whom we read in the newspaper got depressed or committed suicide.

The unhappiness of the prevalence of such a state of economic aspect of good students is reduced a bit when we can do something. They are in a good mood and prepared to tolerate it.

We plan to have a tiffin service for the students who remain hungry and attend the wards, now that we know. The ongoing trust project of lunch every month to 1000 relatives of admitted patients is ongoing, now we will add needy medicos to that

.

After we are done helping the first, we will be trying to help the second third fourth and, fifth deserving medico to the tune of 100,000 to begin with, under the VYOMPUTRAS project of the Trust.

I am thankful to Dr Sagun Bhai and the team including Dr Ninama who sensitized me to these problems at college of which I had no idea.

We all can do and help them in whatever way.

Like us there may be many who donate in many places but may not be aware of the plight of our juniors and hence this sharing. Please do not consider it as bragging (the amounts are small) but a good beginning for all of us.

Yours in trust, Sandhya & Chaitanya Buch