Ranchi Rotaractors mobilise unused medicines

In a novel project, families in the Jharkhand capital, Ranchi, are urged to ‘Save your Unused Medicines’ and drop these into the collection boxes placed by the Rotaract Club of St Xavier’s College, D 3250, at 16 locations in the city, including  their college campus and in few schools.

Since January, the Bachi Dawai Bachaey has netted 35 kg of generic drugs for general ailments like fever, cold, BP, diabetes, etc.  “We have donated two bulk consignments to the Niramaya Hospital which offers treatment to less privileged people,” says Rtr Ashvah Jawed, Project Head-cum-Medicine Coordinator. A 25-member team of Rotaractors takes care of sorting and segregating the medicines and “utmost care is taken  to weed out expired tablets and formulations.”

How it all began

Father Nicholas Tete, the college Principal and Prakash Tekriwal, a businessman, in an interaction with the Rotaractors sowed the seeds for  the project that will help needy and underprivileged patients. “In January 2018, Club President Amrendra Yadav and Project Head Lisha Papneja took up the work in all earnest with support from college authorities and RC Ranchi, our parent club,” says Rahul Pandey, IPP of the Rotaract club. Within few months, the project got media attention and praise from the community as the collected medicines will lower the cost of healthcare for the needy. “We have plans to install at least 100 collection boxes in Ranchi covering busy places, offices and residential localities,” he says.

The club invites other Rotaract clubs  to replicate this project  in their cities. Stressing on the need to expand the collection drive for larger turnover of medicines, Jawed says, “it is possible to net at least 25–30 kg in a month given the response we have got so far.”

The club is planning to hold medical camps in rural areas on weekends.  “Villagers will be screened for general ailments by volunteer doctors, but this programme is still at planning stage,” for, he adds, the medicines they collect should have sufficient volume to cater to  rural needs.

Enhancing learning

Four years ago, when the club was formed, its Charter President Surbi Sinha and her team adopted the ­Rajkiyakrit Madhya Vidyalaya, a government middle school at ­Tharpakna locality under their Shiksha project, and since then the Rotaractors have been actively involved in teaching the children their regular lessons and extracurricular activities.

This year, with the efforts of the Club President Yadav and Shiksha Project Head Kumari Madhu, the club renovated the school library and set up a playschool there with support from a Mumbai-based NGO, while Tekriwal extended help for painting the entire school campus and setting up a badminton court.  A handwash station and gender-specific washrooms were also added. “A corpus of ₹60,000 has also been set aside to provide more facilities for the school,” says Pandey.