85 patients at the Ganga Prem Hospice cancer clinic in Rishikesh

The cancer clinic was held on May 29, 2022. The last Sunday of each month is awaited by many people, not only by the patients who look forward to consultation with Dr Dewan but also by the staff  who start the camp preparations one week before the day, The office staff text the clinic information to patients and even call them on the basis of the data on patients attending the cancer camps any time during the last 6 months. Then the day before the clinic a team of cleaners and nurses go to the clinic premises to set everything up.

In May it is a tourist season in Uttarakhand, and in Rishikesh and Haridwar, the roads get fully blocked with traffic. Still patients don’t want to miss the cancer camp and make the journey even though some were stuck in traffic for 2 hours. At the camp 85 patients benefited from consultations with Dr. A.K.Dewan, Oncology Surgeon from Rajiv Gandhi Cane Institute, New Delhi, and Medical Director of Ganga Prem Hospice . After seeing patients at the inpatient facility, he reached the camp in the centre of Rishikesh and started seeing patients  from 09:00am. He was was accompanied by Dr. Taranjit Singh, Palliative Care specialise and CMO of Ganga Prem Hospice and by Dr. J.P.Rathi (Ayurveda).

Some patients were counselled by Ms Anjita, GPH medical social worker, and  offered home-care services while other patients were offered inpatient care. Volunteer Mr. Mehra helped our Accountant Mr. Durgesh in registration, and nurses Sister Sheetal and Sister Manisha were assisted in serving patients by volunteer  Mr. Khurana and GPH Intern Debashish. The pharmacy section was handled by Sister Jaya, and the scanning of reports was done by office assistant Ms. Vidhi.

Hospitality in the form of serving tea, giving out drinking water, dropping or receiving patient to the gate or from the gate via wheel chair was taken care of by Nursing Assistant Sunita ji and Housekeeper Sandeep with willing help from our Drivers Purnananda Ji and Vijay Haldar. Volunteers, who joined later, also took care that all the patients were comfortable, All the proceedings were captured on camera by the lens of GPH intern Saurav.

The camp being especially busy ended at 02:15pm rather than 01:00pm.