In India, may be in other countries too, several non profit organizations (NGOs) and few Govt agencies play a key role to provide treatment facilities to poor people at a subsidized rate. That’s really a good effort.
But who does think about the middle class families. No non-profit agencies provide monetary help to middle class families. The middle class families fall in the zone of having too much money to qualify to be a beneficiary and yet not enough money to afford the high cost of the treatment.
My wife, Soma was under treatment for 6 years. I didn’t have sufficient money to continue her costly treatment for such a long time. One of my maternal uncles came up and took the responsibility of her treatment.
But I know most of the middle class families are not so lucky like me. They drain out their savings, sell their properties and then go for private loans where rate of interest is around 2-3% per month, yes per month. Ultimately they lose everything.
Helplessly, after a certain stage, a middle class family members witness their loved one to die without any treatment because they’ve no more money to treat the patient but still that ‘middle class’ tag is there with them, so let the patient die, no NGOs will come up to help the family.
I have contacted more than 100 reputed NGOs all over India and all refused to help me although I detailed to them about my situation. Politely they informed me that Soma didn’t qualify.
Qualify for what? It seemed to me they wanted to tell me that Soma didn’t qualify to receive further treatment and hence to survive as She belonged to a middle class family. What a wonderful system.
Sometimes, when Soma’s doctors were talking about the cost, I was cursing myself to born in a middle class family. Soma felt so much guilty for all the financial pressure put on us due to her treatment that sometimes she couldn’t look at my eyes. I tried my level best to hide the tension, but she could easily understand the palpable tension.
It seemed to me that society didn’t bother at all if middle class families exist or extinct.
Everyday, Doctors and cancer hospital authorities are earning huge amount of money. If they come forward together and donate an amount, it would considerably help the middle class families.
Ironically such method benefits exist and are enjoyed by selected wealthy and influencial persons who don’t need any such benefits.
Let the good senses prevail in minds of the persons running the Govt and NGOs and find time to think about the plight of the middle class family and make some provisions to help needy patients of so called middle class families.
