Dubai teenagers' Ramadan offer

This Ramadan, Members of Helping Hand, a non-profitable group formed under the initiative of a teenage student of Dubai, went around various labour camps to create awareness about diabetes and kidney problems and with the help of an Indian social worker who donated her own kidney to kidney patients.

Volunteers of the Helping Hand are working in collaboration with Uma Preman, Director, and Shanthi Medical Information Center in creating medical camps and awareness campaigns to ascertain the prevalence of kidney diseases. They distributed iftar packets and juices to some labour camps, participated in Humanitarian Day Activities to commemorate the death anniversary of His Highness Sheikh Zayed, and raised fund to help treatment of kidney patients and conduct free medical camps for the workers.

Mohammed Rashikh, a ninth standard student in Dubai, who formed Helping Hand, with the help of his parents has been enthusiastically enrolling new members and planning new humanitarian and charity work.

Rashik told Emirates24|7: “I am keen to do social worker and we have formed this group to extend a helping hand to the needy and poor people. I got inspiration to start this group from Uma Preman, an Indian Social worker from Kerala, who has lost her husband for kidney disease and she volunteered to donate her kidney to a stranger kidney patient. This happened about fifteen years ago and she has been recognized as a well known social worker creating awareness about kidney disease and other chronic problems.”  “Our mission is to give happiness to the needy,” said the 14-year-old boy, who is engaged in various activities, along with his studies. “I am inspired in this mission by my father,” he says, adding that our members include youngsters from India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and we plan to increase the number of volunteers.

“Now we have only 20 members from four nationalities and we have been spreading the word. I got inspiration to start this group from Uma madam,   who donated her own kidney to a stranger on hearing that his life is at risk. She lost her husband to tuberculosis, due to lack of diagnosis and treatment. In her loss she found the mission of her life. She set up free medical information cum care centre "Santhi Medical Information Centre" in the memory of her husband. Uma Preman has received more than 65 awards, including CNN-IBN 2010 “The Real Hero” award that recognizes “the undying spirit of ordinary people who have done extraordinary service and have expanded the realm of humanity”. She conducts mass medical awareness campaign among the lower strata of society in South India, so that early detection of kidney and other chronic disease help them treat the diseases properly in advance.

Shanthi Medical Information Systems runs a number of dialysis centers in the South Indian state of Kerala to provide affordable kidney dialysis to poor patients and many machines in her centers are donated by Non Resident Indians, especially from the UAE. Among the members in the group are Mohammed Ismail, Sumaiyah, Safa, Ismael K, Gouri Shankar, Neeraj Bipin, Mohammed Shahaz, Marwan yaqoob, Viswananth Kumar, Adithya Sajith, Faisal Ahmed, Rohan Krishnan, Aryan Krishnan, Adil Abdul Rahman and Ramesh.  “Our long term plan is to have free or affordable dialysis center in the UAE to help diagnose kidney problems and provide free or affordable dialysis facilities. Even though there are many kidney patients in labour camps, they are not coming forward because of lack of such facilities,” said Madhu Madan, a volunteer from Helping Hand.

“We are a small group of students from various countries and other middle class residents. Our mission is to help the poor and downtrodden sections of society. One source of inspiration is Uma Preman, Director of Shanthi Medical Information, who has donated her kidney to a chronically sick kidney patient and she is completing 15 years of her donation now. We have collected funds to help her conduct medical camps in various labour camps that will check the labourers for chronic diseases, especially hypertension, diabetics and heart diseases. Early detection of these chronic diseases will help easy treatment, but normally such diseases are detected at an advanced stage.  Specially for the blue collar workers living in the labour camps, such medical camps will be very useful,” said Madhu Madan, a volunteer of Helping Hands. “Such medical camps here and back home are conducted for minimum 150 patients and maximum 500 people. The medical camp participants are checked for diabetics, kidney and heart diseases and the participants eight and Body Mass Index are also checked. Blood tests are conducted along with life style diseases. The minimum cost for conducting such a camp is Indian Rupees 25 (Dh 2) per participant,” said Uma Preman, Director of Shanthi Medical Information Center. She has been conducting such campaign for the last fifteen years with the help of philanthropists, especially Non Resident Indians.

Mohammed said “ We have  participated in "Emirati Humanitarian Work Day" by volunteering for "Adopt-a-camp Ramadan Care Package" event. In 3rd week of July , we did Ramadan Iftar Charity event for Ajman labourers . We have also organised a fund raising event at Dubai Outlet mall . We did event called "Quenching Thurst" on 6th july 2013 at National Paints junction , Sharjah. Our team of "Helping hands" gave chilled juices , oranges to workers working under hot sun. We also volunteered for this month's Blood Donation Camp organised by Dubai Health Authority and DP World at Arabian Centre.” The boys collected some funds to give for Santhi Medical Information Centre for the treatment of poor . We gave the funds we collected yesterday to Uma Preman.”

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