Click to play videoKolkata: Kolkata – the City of Joy – is also the city that houses the sick, the starved and the homeless. But they aren't the only ones scouring the slums and shanties of this metropolis.
Twice a week you just might bump into D Ashish and his troupe of volunteers walking through the streets collecting medicines. These are medicines that he makes sure reach those who need it the most but can't afford it.
Ashish had a pampererd childhood. But that didn't blind him to the other side of life. His neighbourhood was ringed by some of the city's biggest slums.
By the time he turned 14, he had seen that many in these slums died without any treatment while others threw away the unused medicines.
So Ashish and 15 of his friends began a door-to-door collection drive, picking up unused medicines from neighbours, and distributing them among those who couldn't afford any. And thus began the Medical Bank in 1980.
“People throw away unused medicines. If we collect them lot of poor people can use them,” said Ashish, Medical Bank’s founder.
Today, the Medical Bank is not just about medicines. It gets patients treated by reputed doctors either free of cost or at a discounted fee. It also distributes spectacles and pacemakers among the poor.
Its latest initiative is called the ‘footpath hospital’ where 25 doctors treat about 100 patients twice a week.
Public donations have kept the crusade going, though medicine collections have halved in the past few years after drug companies cut down on free sample supplies to doctors.
But Ashish is not giving up – 27 tough years have taught him that like disease, every adversity has a cure.
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