On July 7, Suresh Manjulkar (30), a resident of Buldhana district, was grappling with the death of his 13-month-old son Dhanraj, who had been receiving treatment for blood cancer for 37 days in the intensive care unit at the Tata Memorial Hospital (TMH) in Parel.

Mr. Manjulkar, who drove vehicles for a living, had barely a few hundred rupees in his hand. He decided to carry out the last rites in Mumbai to avoid the emotional trauma of transporting his son’s body to Buldhana, but he didn’t have enough funds to arrange it.

This was when the social workers at TMH came to Mr. Manjulkar’s rescue. They arranged for the body to be transported to Shivaji Park Crematorium, where Mr. Manjulkar and his wife Jyoti carried out the last rites. They also gave ₹5,000 as nutritional support for Jyoti, who was pregnant then, and made arrangements for their trip back home. Mr. Manjulkar said, “We were in the midst of deep grief. Had the hospital not stepped in to help us, we would have had a very tough time.”

The hospital has been providing what it calls bereavement support to financially weak parents like Mr. Manjulkar for several years now. The ImPaCCT (Improving Paediatric Cancer Care and Treatment) Foundation was established at TMH in 2010 to ensure every child who came to the hospital received treatment irrespective of their financial background. Nearly 60,000 new cancer patients are admitted to the hospital every year, of which 2,000-odd are children.

The hospital provides financial support during the child’s treatment and emotional support to parents in the event of the child’s death. The paediatric social workers are part of a WhatsApp group and they ensure one of them is beside parents after a child dies.

According to Shalini Jatia, secretary of ImPaCCT, it is not an easy task to raise funds for the foundation. Ms. Jatia said, “Donors have their own mindsets. Raising funds is challenging owing to the huge patient load. Most donors want to contribute to curative purposes, while some contribute towards palliative care. Getting funds for bereavement support is most difficult.”

Ms. Jatia said, “Most patients come from outside Mumbai and their funds get depleted due to the long stay in the city. When patients die, we try to convince their families to carry out the last rites in Mumbai to avoid the pain of travelling with the body for hundreds of kilometres.”

However, Ms. Jatia said that a few parents insist on taking the body back home. She said one woman wanted to take her daughter’s body back to their house in Belgaum as she wanted to spend as much time as possible with her. In such cases, the foundation gets the body embalmed, pays the railway charges for transporting the body and funds the tickets of two caregivers.

According to Dr. Shripad Banavali, head of medical and paediatric oncology at TMH, the kin of four to six paediatric patients require bereavement support every month. He said, “At TMH, we aim to offer holistic care that covers cancer treatment and financial, educational and nutritional support. We strive to make sure no patient goes back without treatment because of financial constraints. This is where the donors play a major role. We need many more donors to come forward.”

The first contribution towards the bereavement support initiative came from the Rotary Club of Bombay in 2011. Two NGOs — Helping Hands Foundation and Anjeze Charitable Trust — have been regular contributors.