Calcutta Heart Clinic and Hospital Society has a new ambulance now, thanks to a donation by the Inner Wheel Club of Salt Lake Down Town.
The air-conditioned Mahindra Supro ambulance was handed over outside CF community hall on Monday. “This was a huge project for us, costing Rs 9.2 lakh, and we raised funds through internal donation as well as external sources,” said president of the club Manju Mitra. “And we decided to gift the ambulance to this hospital as it is a non-profit one and charges affordable rates. That way maximum people will benefit.”
District chairman of the club Jyoti Mahipal was glad the handover was taking place on January 10. “Today is the 98th International Inner Wheel Day and as we head towards our centenary year we wanted to invest in something permanent and sustainable instead of a one-off activity like distributing clothes.”
Biplab Chandra, doctor of internal medicine at the Sector III hospital, attended the event on behalf of his organisation. “The pandemic is bringing new challenges to the healthcare industry. We have increased our Covid beds to 95 since the sudden surge this month and already 70 to 80 of them are occupied,” he said.
As for ambulances, they have felt the need for three since the beginning of the pandemic — one for Covid patients, one for suspected-Covid patients and a third for non-Covid ones. “But we only had two of our own and would have to hire the third. This ambulance will be the third one that we needed,” Chandra smiled.