UMA PREMAN: PROVIDING FREE MEDICAL INFORMATION
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| Uma Preman, ‘Santhi’ Medical Information Centre, Punnathur Road, Kottappadi, Guruvayoor, Thrissur 680505 |
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Want to know about medicines, doctors or hospitals? These and more medical information is available for free at ‘Santhi’ Medical Information Centre, Punnathur Road, Kottappadi, Guruvayoor, Thrissur. (Phone: 0487-556796, e-mail: santhimedicalinfocentre@rediffmail.com) And the one behind ‘Santhi’ is 32-year-old Uma Preman.
What made Uma, who has studied up to plus one, take up this work?
Once her husband Preman was admitted in Sree Chitra Tirunal Hospital, Thiruvananthapuram with multi-drug-resistant Tuberculosis. Like other bystanders, Uma too had to wait outside the hospital till visiting time in the evening everyday. It was from conversations with fellow bystanders that she came to understand the vital need for medical information. Mode of treatment, cost, hospitals and consultation timings… if such information were readily available, she wondered.
She touched her husband gently and whispered her idea of doing something for others like them.
“I won’t be able to help. You may…” Before he could complete the sentence, Preman went into coma and died after 64 days.
After her husband’s death she went to SCT Hospital again and met Dr. Neelakantan. Some friends of Preman too helped. She went to major hospitals and collected information. At Metro Hospital, Noida, Delhi she saw a bypass surgery.
She has donated one kidney to a patient. “With each life saved, I remember Premettan”, she says.
There are difficulties in running the Centre. “Will it be possible to continue? I don’t know. But somehow one must go on,” she says.
Courtesy: Manoj K Meppayil, Gruhalakshmi, March 2002.
Contributed by: Administrator
