Archive for the 'Health' Category

At IIM-A food festival, organic foods make healthiest profits

Tuesday, December 4th, 2007

Pulkit Vasudha Ahmedabad, December 4: The Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIM-A) is providing a platform to entrepreneurs to market and sell their traditional delicacies, which are made using organic ingredients. Dilip Patel is one such person who has been in the business of manufacturing pure jaggery, without using chemicals or acid, for the last [...]

Retired defence personnel struggle for medical aid

Tuesday, November 6th, 2007

Pulkit Vasudha Ahmedabad, November 6: A 65-year-old retired infantry jawan stands exhausted at the gate of the Ex-Sevicemen Contributory Health Scheme (ECHS) polyclinic at Airport Circle in the scorching afternoon sun. The pain in the chest of this erstwhile jawan of the Indian Army has only worsened since 8 am when he left his house [...]

An exhibition of grit and determination

Sunday, October 21st, 2007

Pulkit Vasudha Ahmedabad, October 21 A Man with amputated arms sits at an easel, dips his paint brush occasionally in a palette and sweeps the canvas with strong stokes, all the while gripping his brush firmly between his teeth. A mentally retarded teenager holds open a file folder with the colours of the Tricolour striped [...]

Quack’s patients, Suffering in patience

Friday, October 12th, 2007

Pulkit Vasudha Adesar (Kutch), October 12 “In this profession, it is not the degrees and the qualifications that matter. What matters is experience,” says Ghanshyam P Gohel, injecting a six month old baby. “Though I did not study beyond the primary school level, I have been the most trusted doctor in all of Rapar for [...]

Ailing health centres of Gujarat

Thursday, September 20th, 2007

Pulkit Vasudha Patan/Kutch/Amreli, September 19 No one in Rafu village of Sami taluka in Patan district remembers when the building of the primary health centre (PHC) collapsed. The new set of buildings being financed by the European Union in the name of post-earthquake development programme, are no where near completion. Rafu PHC presently functions from [...]

Teenage Social Worker Steals Hearts

Sunday, August 26th, 2007

Pulkit Vasudha Ahmedabad, August 26: Yogesh Mer’s (13) face lights up as Amardeep Rana (16) hands him a shining black toy radio. Yogesh, a patient in the paediatric ward of M P Shah Cancer Hospital, was paralysed 25 days ago. Amardeep (16) visited Yogesh in the antiseptic ward on Saturday afternoon and asked him if [...]

Deformity does not deter this mountain climber

Tuesday, August 21st, 2007

Pulkit Vasudha Ahmedabad, August 21:Born with clubfoot (congenital deformity of the foot usually marked by a curled shape or twisted position of the ankle and heel and toes) in the small town of Viramgaon, 60 kilometres from Ahmedabad, Bhupesh Modi does not know what it is to walk without a limp. The handicap may have [...]

Vendors outside hospitals double up as touts for blood donors

Friday, June 15th, 2007

Pulkit Vasudha Ahmedabad, June 15: Posing as a relative of a patient urgently in need of blood, all that Ashwini Varma, a medical technician, had to do was approach the nearest tea stall vendor outside the civil hospital. The deal was struck with Kallubhai, the tea stall owner, for Rs 500 per unit of blood. [...]

Stop baying for blood, start donating

Wednesday, June 13th, 2007

Pulkit Vasudha Ahmedabad, June 12:AS the world readies to observe Blood Donor’s Day on June 14, blood banks in the city are crying themselves hoarse over shortage of blood in the city. They say that the difference between the amount of blood donated and the rising demand for blood in hospitals in the city, keeps [...]