Kol doctor performing dialysis for ₹50 during curbs for critical kidney patients

Kol doctor performing dialysis for ₹50 during curbs for critical kidney patients

Anuja.Jaiswal@timesgroup.com

Agra:02.07.2020

At a time when instances of hospitals and doctors turning away critically ill patients are surfacing with alarming regularity, a doctor in Kolkata, helped in a non-for-profit initiative by 59 others, is performing dialysis on severe kidney patients for a nominal charge of ₹50.

Dr Fuad Halim, son-in-law of former vice-chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) Lt Gen (retd) Zameer Uddin Shah, started the service during the lockdown. “I saw the problems that patients were facing due to the Covid-19 lockdown. So many had been rendered jobless and didn’t even have money to travel for treatment. So I decided to charge a token amount of ₹50 for a dialysis at my clinic,” he told TOI. So far, his team of three other doctors and four technicians has conducted 2,357 procedures. Two of the doctors are volunteers.

With Covid-19 status no bar, the clinic has seen a surge of patients. “We are not insisting on Covid-19 certificates from patients. We want to give hassle-free treatment. Approximately, 95 patients are visiting the clinic for dialysis every month as opposed to 70 that were being admitted prelockdown,” said Halim. And patients are turning up even from far-off places like Murshidabad, about 200km from Kolkata.

Across the country, dialysis and cancer patients have struggled to get treatment during lockdown as hospitals were either busy with Covid-19 patients or conducting only emergency surgeries. There were reports of hospitals turned away patients out of fear that they could be asymptomatic carriers and infect others. For many such patients, Halim’s clinic has been a lifesaver.

Halim is being assisted by Kolkata Swasthya Sankalpa (KSS) — a non-profit initiative he started with 59 others — mostly friends and family — to keep the cost of medical treatments down. The association has been providing affordable dialysis services to needy patients for over a decade.

Dr Fuad Halim, son-in-law of former vice-chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) Lt Gen (retd) Zameer Uddin Shah, started the service during the lockdown