SRINAGAR: Helpage India- an NGO which works for the look after of the elderly is operating in Jammu & Kashmir for last 10 years. The main aim of NGO is to hold medical camps across the country to provide a helping hand to the old.
Helpage India during floods provided medical assistance to more than one lakh patients in Kashmir region. The organization in the year 2015 held 260 medical camps and nearly on a monthly roll more than 1000 patients were provided medical treatment for free. The NGO has three MMOs (Medical Mobile Obs) one each in Srinagar, Jammu and Leh. These vans provide assistance to the elderly sick who are unable to see a doctor for treatment.
Helpage India is mostly active in Srinagar and its outskirts and they are planning to provide help to far flung areas of Kashmir in near future.
The organization has one general physician, three physiotherapists and sometimes they hire a specialist if the need arises. Around this month we held medical camps in Nishat, Shalimar, Lal bazaar, Bemina and other areas. We gave free medicines to thousands of old people with a prescription charge of Rs. 20 per person, said Aijaz Ahmed SPO (Special production officer) Helpage India
On Wednesday the Help Age held a camp at Syedapora where a long queue of patients was seen waiting for their turn.
An elderly Mohammad Gulzar Bhat, a diabetic with no one to look after, said, My wife died three years back and I had a lone son who has moved outside Kashmir 10 years back and comes here for few months to see me. He is settled outside now. He gives everything to me but there is no time for him to look after me. I have come here for checkup. So it fine for me now.
According to Khadija Manzoor, I dont have money to go to a private doctor and if one goes to hospital whole day is wasted there. It is better you are seen by a good physician who gives ample time to treat you properly. That is why I have come here. These kinds of medical camps should be held frequently so that more and more people can be helped.
This is a common thing now. We see hundreds of patients like these who have no one to look after them. Helpage India is for them. We locate them and try to help them. Provide them with free medicines, checkups. As it is only for elderly and patients above 50 are treated. This exercise goes for whole day and even if we feel that there is more need we extend the medical camp for few days also, said the doctors at medical camp at Syedapora.
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