MADURAI
Crowdfunding was increasingly becoming an option used by patients in need of expensive treatment, said Anoj Viswanathan, president and co-founder of the online crowdfunding platform Milaap here on Saturday.
Addressing the media here in association with Meenakshi Mission Hospital and Research Centre, he said that 90 % of the donations sought through the platform in last two years were for healthcare.
“We have managed to raise around ₹ 330 crore to assist more than 15,000 patients since our inception in 2010,” he said.
Explaining how the platform worked, he said that anybody was free to raise a request for donations from the public. “We verify the genuineness of all the requests before uploading them to our platform,” he said.
While the norm was for individuals to promote their requests through their own connections on social media platforms, he said that in a few deserving cases, Milaap would promote the requests through its social media platforms that have a huge following.
“Sometimes, the family may be extremely poor, or the need may be immediate. Usually such cases are chosen for promotion by us,” he said.
He stressed the platform, however, need not be used just for healthcare related needs, but for any other crowdfunding purposes.
Kasi Viswanathan from the Paediatric Oncology department at MMHRC said that the hospital had helped its patients raise around ₹ 2 crore for treatment in the last three to four years.
“Though it is relatively easy to cure cancer in children than in adults, it is quite expensive and many families cannot afford. That is where this crowdfunding is proving to be useful,” he said.
He highlighted in particular the cases of two children, one with a genetic immune deficiency disorder and the other with blood cancer, where crowdfunding helped in raising funds for their treatment.