Linkages
Save A Child’s
Heart- Vasu Reddy*
Being a child is to be
free. Being a child is to have fun.
Being a kid is to learn. Being
a child is to make mischief. Being
is a child is to run around and play.
Being a child requires a strong heart so it can handle the
excitement of everyday learning, play, fun and excitement.
Can you imagine the little heart needing surgery?
Children whenever and wherever they are full of promise, full of
energy, full of hope and full of life.
They bring joy and happiness to all around them by simply being a
Child.
As a kid I never
stopped to think, I just did things.
I wanted to learn, read, play, jump and I know I was full of
mischief. I think I only got
away from serious trouble, because I made up by doing well in school.
Being grown up I still want to be a kid as if I were a kid I need
not worry about my day to day hopes and anticipations.
My heart today probably needs cure in more than one way and
probably behaves well enough to get to the next day, but when I was a kid
it was always racing. I can’t imagine if my heart would have withheld the
excitement of what I did, if it was not fully fit.
I was no different than any other kid, and needed a fully
functional heart to keep me from being a kid, as does every other kid in
the world today.
When I heard of Save A
Child’s Heart (“SACH”) I was immediate to work on the cause.
This program and any such programs are touching both the children
and their hearts. What more
can one program accomplish? I
was also pleased to learn that the newspapers in India and some of the
Internet media are already publishing the information.
It Works to Promote
Good Causes
The
newspaper Deccan Chronicle in India and Apollo have teamed up in promoting
SACH as Dil Se, and project has great response from readers whose
contributions in the form of checks, cash and US dollars has swelled to
Rupees 65,38,324.70 between October 7 and November 23, 2004.
With Rupees 65 lakhs, the Dil Se project can operate approximately
260 children. As on
November 23, 2004, the doctors of Apollo Hospitals have operated 59
children ailing with heart ailments. Still there are 265 children who have
to undergo surgeries out of the identified 525 children. Apollo Hospitals
and Deccan Chronicle thank the generous support of the readers. But,
please keep in mind that there are 265 more children who need your help.
The program has
excellent medical and pediatric support from Apollo Hospitals.
Its holiday time for all of
us, and great time for tax planning and giving.
It must be incredible to repair hearts and be a part of such
wonderful program. The tile
of the program Save A Child’s Heart more than conveys the goal of
SACH.
Question and Answers
on SACH
To request specific
information on SACH, I sent the request to Apollo and Dr. Hari Prasad from
Hyderabad responded very quickly. I
received the responses on November 23, 2004.
Question: Who
conceived the idea of SACH?
Response: Chairman, Dr. Pratap C Reddy with the noble intention of
helping poor children with heart diseases
Question: When did SACH officially get started, and when was the
first surgery
done under this program?
Response: Launched in April 2003. First surgery performed in April
2004
Question: Is Hyderabad only center performing surgeries, or are
there other
centers in India doing the same service?
Response: Hyderabad has the advanced pediatric cardiac center. We
are focusing on Hyderabad for this specialty.
Question: Is Apollo only the group involved or are there other
hospitals and
organizations involved with SACH?
Response: Only Apollo.
Question: From the inception of SACH how many surgeries have been
performed as of November 2004?
Response: Over 225 surgeries with aid varying from 100% to 25%.
Question: Can a donor living abroad have information on the Child
being sponsored?
Response: Yes, by E-Mail.
Question: Does SACH have a coordinator in USA? If yes contact
details?
Response: No
Question: How many operations per month can be handled by SACH?
Response: We can do 60 surgeries/month.
Question: Do you have any affiliation with UNICEF, Red Cross,
United Way or other organizations?
Response: No
Visit with Preetha Reddy in
Chicago
Ms.
Reddy is the Managing Director of Apollo Hospitals in Chennai, India.
She was visiting Chicago and was gracious to meet with me on 30th
November 2004 morning to discuss SACH.
She lives in Chennai. We
had a wonderful chat on India, Apollo programs on SACH, Cure Foundation
and other areas where Apollo has taken initiatives to help the
underprivileged, while providing world-class healthcare to its patients.
She is very engaging and was genuinely interested in our plan to
promote SACH. Some of her
comments from the discussion:
Question:
What is the program expansion plan from Hyderabad to other cities in
India?
Response:
We are scaling it up. We want
to do it in Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Calcutta, Delhi, Madras and Madurai.
Madurai and Madras have already done some work on the program, and
it is not significant to talk about this at this point of time.
It has been done with individual donations from people living in
India or in the US.
Question:
Are you getting assistance from physicians coming from the US or
outside of India?
Response:
No. We haven’t
gotten them involved yet. We
did start the program, as it hurt us to see so many children with
congenital heart disease. From
our own database we think there about 300,000 children suffering in the
Southern India. So any intervention with this would help.
We also looked at economically deprived families.
A lot of these children are girls.
Almost 70% of them are girls.
So we started off to provide assistance and the program has been
growing to support the children.
Question:
How involved is Dr. Pratap Reddy with this program?
Response:
It is his idea. He
feels it is our social responsibility.
We have done so well, and we feel that we have to take care of this
aspect of society. That’s
why he built a hospital in his village.
It was family and we built this beautiful hospital in his village.
It doesn’t do cardiac surgeries, but is linked by telemedicine.
The children are screened in the village, and they come to
Hyderabad for surgeries.
Question:
Are you coordinating with US based organizations to make it easy for
people to contribute to SACH? Also, providing a vehicle to use Christmas time for giving
along with the tax deductions to non-for-profits.
Response:
It program is too new to setup an entity in the US. To be honest we never thought of setting up a US entity that
might also help with tax breaks. I
need to get some advise on how to do this effectively. Last year what happened is people just sent checks to India,
and how the tax implications impacted I am not sure. We need to think about how we best work with US based
organizations to help with the program.
We will discuss with our advisors and work towards setting up the
program.
Message
to our readers from Preetha Reddy:
“I
think it is our responsibility to take care of such tings back home. Because here in the US state and government will look after
its people who need help and in India we don’t have a public assistance
sort of program in place and that’s why individuals have to contribute
to care for others as every little bit goes a long way.
25,000 Indian Rupees will do it for each surgery, which is what
about 500 US dollars. Few
hundred dollars will take care of one child.
Even ten dollars is fine. We
will take anything. The cause
is important.”
Perspective
India is enormous in
every aspect of its dimensions: people, size, issues, politics and issues.
India’s children are its future and those little Indian hearts
are precious. SACH and other
initiatives to help children is another great effort by our community to
show their great heart. While
developing my story, I was told people we giving small donation of ten
rupees or one hundred rupees and these generous people were rickshaw
pullers or laborer. Please
send this information to as many people as possible, and speak of it.
I take great pleasure in simply writing about it. I am sure my friends, my family, my readers and myself will
have the heart to be generous with our time and wallets to SACH.
These kids need fully functioning hearts to be joyful.
Contact Information:
SACH
VP Office, Apollo Hospitals
Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad 500033.
Phone 91-40-23551066, Mobile 91-9849005588, Fax 91-40-23608050,
Email:
vphyd@apollolife.com http://www.apollohyderabad.com/sach/index.htm
*Click here
to send a message to Mr. Vasu Reddy
Many
thanks to Dr. Hari Prasad of Apollo, Hyderabad for responding to my
questions, and to my brother Nagesh Devapatla from Chicago for helping me
with the introductions and information.
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