Time To Give Back

How Specialty Surgical Oncology plans to give back to the Society and Cancer patients

• Cancer Charity Trust and “Reevive”
• Asha Oncocare Foundation

Why so soon?

“You cannot do a kindness too soon because you never know how soon it will be too late.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

Specialty Surgical Oncology is a 1 year old group practice. But as our founding principle, we had decided that we will be more than just a group practice. We wanted to leverage our know-how and involvement in oncology to help those that were not fortunate enough to be financially sound to sponsor their own treatment.

Our social responsibility to our patients and their families is at the very core of our practice.

This led to the formation of Asha Oncocare Foundation. The aim of this foundation is to help our financially challenged patients get quality and timely treatment so that they don’t suffer just for want of resources.

In this regard, we liaise with donors and patients, make sure that there is a thorough background check and documentation of the financial, social and medical needs of the patient and help them get timely financial help to complete their treatment.

Needless to say, the supply of funds fall terribly short of the demand but its just the beginning and we have high aspirations.

Another way in which we have been contributing even before Specialty Surgical Oncology was founded is Cancer Charity Trust and its online crowd funding platform “Reevive”.

Here’s how Reevive works:

1. We are a zero admin, zero transaction fee platform where the entire cost of the admin and transaction cost of payment received is borne by the trustees.
2. Process of patient selection: All patients are patients below poverty line (annual family income less than 1L), they are taking treatment at Tata Memorial Hospital, most of them in the NC category (non-chargeable category, which is reserved for patients below poverty line, and there are no charges for the hospital services and doctors), all patients are potentially curable, are recommended by the consultants themselves and have necessary documents to support their authenticity (these documents are displayed on the website). Each patient is then scrutinized personally by us for their legitimacy for aid, their financial and social background and whether they are compliant with their treatment.
3. Each patient is then displayed on the website, with their consent, as a campaign along with their target amount, the disease type, the social and financial background, along with documents to support this. If the patient urgently needs some money, we give them an initial cheque of 15-25000 to ensure that while the campaign is on and money is being collected for them, their treatment doesn’t get delayed.
4. Typically, each campaign lasts for about a month and we have between 5-7 campaigns each month. Our goal is to have at least 10 campaigns every month and fund at least 50% of their requirements each month.
5. The donations come as one time donations as cheques which we then divide into 12 installments over a period of 1 year; or online (our recommended method) either as one time donation or as a “PLEDGE”, where a particular amount (any amount above 1000) is automatically transferred as an ECS and is equally divided across all existing campaigns over a period of 1 month.
6. To ensure complete transparency, the amount that is collected at the end of the campaign is donated to Tata Memorial Hospital in a unique patient account (the receipt is displayed on the website once received in the completed campaigns page). This money can now only be accessed using a smart card for procuring medications from the Tata Memorial Hospital Pharmacy, where the drugs are sold at a highly subsidized rate.
7. We provide 3 monthly updates of the patients till their treatment is completed and try to keep in touch even thereafter so that the donors get to know what result their donations yielded.

So, all the patients that are currently displayed on the website www.reevive.org are eligible for help. To prepare a patient campaign is a time-consuming process and typically takes 5-7 days. We also liaise with the consultants, the social workers at TMH and to ensure that the most deserving of patients get timely help. As you can imagine, it takes time to get these things coordinated.

Over the last 1year and 9 months, with the generous contribution of our donors, we have successfully contributed over a Crore of rupees to patients suffering from cancer form a socioeconomically challenged background and being treated at Tata Memorial Hospital.

For any further clarification, donors can reach out to us on +91 9920 302364, or email us on sanketmehta@ssohospitals.com. The current set of patients is available on the following link https://reevive.org/campaigns.