By P S Gopikrishnan Unnithan Thiruvananthapuram April 11, 2020
A Kerala medical sergeant rode more than 150 km on his bike to deliver medicines to a 4-year-old cancer patient whose family ran out of them in late March during the ongoing lockdown.
The girl lives in Kerala’s Alappuzha district and makes a monthly trip to the Regional Cancer Centre in Thiruvananthapuram, the state capital, for chemotherapy.
But she was recently advised to temporarily take medication when the chemo unit was shut down to pre-empt coronavirus infections.
The medicines aren’t available in her district, so when her family ran out, they reached out to Antony Ratheesh, a civil police officer.
Ratheesh contacted a friend — Vishnu, a former police officer who is now a sergeant at Thiruvananthapuram Medical College — for help with getting the medicines from the Regional Cancer Centre in Thiruvananthapuram.
“Vishnu was getting ready to leave for Thiruvananthapuram (from Alappuzha) for his duty. He had planned to stay there for a week as part of his duty. I told him about the situation and he agreed to help,” Ratheesh told India Today TV.
Vishnu took the prescription from him and left on March 29, the police officer said.
It turned out that the prescription Vishnu was carrying was old, but a doctor who knew the patient realised she needed different medication. Vishnu managed to get what she needed from the pharmacy, but not without facing hassles for hours.
But one challenge remained: the girl needed the medicines by 6 pm that day.
Vishnu first tried to send them halfway till Kollam. That plan didn’t work out.
“Vishnu managed to hand over the medicine to the family by 5:10 pm,” said Antony Ratheesh, the police officer. “It was such a risk riding his…motorcycle for over 150 km within a short span of time.”
Ratheesh said the girl’s family is poor and is “struggling to meet the expenses of the treatment”, and hopes someone will step up to help them out. Vishnu didn’t take any money from them, he said. ( India Today )
