Non-resident Gujarati opens purse for ailing kids back home

VADODARA: Thirty-five years back, UK-based Rasik Patel's life changed forever. Patel, a grocery shop owner, had a grandson who was born with cerebral palsy. The boy, along with three other children with the same condition, was given facilities at a bungalow with eleven caretakers in UK that the government had allotted them. But the thought of what would happen to hundreds of children born with similar health problems in his hometown, moved Patel.
Since then, he has been indefatigable in his support for the underprivileged in Gujarat and has organized camps for polio surgery, supported operations on kids suffering from cancer and cardiac ailments.
Patel will turn 84 this month. He neither runs an NGO nor has any trust named after him but this native of Bhadran village in Anand district has become an institution in himself.
He has not just helped Muni Seva Ashram in Waghodia build an operation theatre and a building for Kailash Cancer Hospital and Research Centre but has personally organized 26 camps for polio patients where over 2,000 operations were successfully performed.
"When I had moved to London, I had told my business partner that whenever I retire, I will go back to India and do some good work. I have been saving money since then and it is now helping me in supporting such causes," said Patel who spent 22 years in Tanzania before shifting to London in 1972.
After retiring in 1995, he along with another resident of Bhadran - Vinod Patel, a polio victim - started organizing eye camps. "But a doctor asked me to do something big if I really wanted to see some change. After that, we started organizing polio surgery camps across Gujarat," said Patel, who is currently based in Enfield, Middlesex.
Rasik and Vinod Patel started by organizing two such camps in Bhadran village where 52 operations were performed.
"Soon, we started receiving enquiries from elsewhere. We organized camps where 25 operations were performed in a day," said Rasik Patel. He roped in Ahmedabad's Polio Foundation and organized, between 1997 and 2012, such camps at Anand, Nadiad, Karamsad, Dharmaj, Savli and Vadodara among other places.
Instead of just donating money for such camps (as many donors do), Patel would personally hunt for the right hospitals, check whether they had a minimum of 25 beds for holding such a camp and facilities for postoperative care. He would even visit the homes of all patients.
"When we started such camps, most patients who came were from different villages without any road connectivity. But the satisfaction at having changed their lives was a motivating factor," said Rasik Patel.
When Bhanubhai and Madhuben Patel Cardiac Centre at Karamsad-based Shree Krishna Hospital in Anand was in search of donors, Patel readily agreed to finance cardiac surgeries on children. So far, he has financed 11 operations