‘Hope’ for city street children
‘Hope’ for city street children
Shiv Karan Singh
KOLKATA: April 15: “We all have our dream, but to see it come true in one’s life is what is most amazing,” declared Ms Maureen Forrest, director, Hope Foundation Ireland, as she inaugurated a hospital for underprivileged children at 139B Vinobha Bhave Road, near Taratala.
The three-storied hospital, an extension of the care Hope Foundation, has been providing street children in Kolkata, will provide facility for thirty patients and host an operation theatre, pathology department, X-ray department and ECG facility.
Ms Forrest stressed that the hospital has not been established “to duplicate any existing services”, but to provide a place to treat children who face rejection in other primary and emergency healthcare centres.
The hospital will host an outpatient facility for the local population, but as director, Hope Kolkata Foundation, Ms Geeta Venkadakrishnan noted: “The hospital is not for adults who can afford government medical facilities.” Such patients will be refered to government hospitals. Dr Alok Maity, medical director of the new hospital, will have a team of eight doctors, both specialists and general medical practitioners, and twenty-one nurses, of which he has already hired nine. “We are prepared to begin functioning from next week,” added Dr Maity after the function.
