Diabetes Care Foundation of India opens free camp for underprivileged patients

New Delhi : The Diabetes Care Foundation of India (DCFI), a non-profit organisation, working extensively on facing the challenge of diabetes, organised a free "diabetes/hypertension related end-organ damage" screening camp for underprivileged high-risk diabetes patients at a government dispensary in New Delhi on Monday.

The Chairman of the National Small Industries Corporation, Ravindra Nath, inaugurated the camp and reiterated the commitments of the foundation run by Dr.Vikas Ahluwalia, and said he was willing to help the foundation through a CSR initiative.

Nath said, "It's (Diabetes) a disease which doesn't see whether you are a rich person or a poor person and poorer (someone is) I believe, out of the ignorance, they suffer more. We have to do a lot of follow-ups and lot of medicines and some medicines are pretty expensive. We need to create awareness so as to catch this disease in time. That is where we thought if we could contribute something under our CSR initiative and work with an organisation which has done quite a good work so that is where we got in touch with this organisation which has been working for last ten years in treating people free of cost."

Dr. Ahluwalia, who is determined to eradicate diabetes, started off with basic tests and treatments. However, with his sheer passion and commitment towards the cause, especially for the underprivileged, he made deep inroads in the field.

The DCFI works on different complementary strategies that provide a comprehensive approach to tackling the public health burden of the disease. It is running Diabetes Care Hospitals, Clinics, Dispensaries, Camps and Insulin Banks for effective screening and treatment

Vikas Ahluwalia, Director, Diabetes Care Foundation of India, said, "We have been doing these camps for the last ten years, but, they have mainly been on screening, education, detection and treatment. But thanks to the NSIC and Shri Ravindranath, we have been able to do this kind of camp which has never been done anywhere in the Delhi- NCR at least. What we are trying to do is to check the end-organ diabetes damage that happens to all these patients and we have got all kinds of equipment that are very well connected to Bluetooth and give printouts and results immediately."

He added, "We started this journey in 2008, and, we started as a non-profit organisation with some contribution from friends and relatives. We have got good support from the public and the Delhi government which actually took us to a different level. In the year 2010, we were lucky enough to be chosen by the Delhi government to participate in the National Health Rural Mission (NRHM). As a part of that, our organisation did an urban health checkup diabetes camp and to our surprise, we found that the cases of hypertension in urban slums was 25 percent and incidents of diabetes in urban slums in Delhi was 13 percent and, that's when we moved on. We moved on to the President's Estate, we have moved on to the NDMC, we have moved on to Delhi Police colonies, and one of the most interesting camps we did was with Tihar jail where we went inside on the occasion of the World Diabetes Day and did a camp for inmates of Tihar Jail.

"Success depends on your backbone, not your wishbone". This popular idiom aptly summarises the life of Dr. Ahluwalia who started his organisation with the support of his friends and family and is now helping disadvantaged people across the state.

The camp, which will continue till March 31, will provide free and easy access to advanced, state-of-the-art life saving diagnostic facilities to patients.