A team of youth has emerged as Good Samaritans by supplying medicines to several patients in villages on the foot of the Western Ghats in Sullia taluk of Dakshina Kannada during the lockdown.
The villages like Kollamogaru, Kalmakaru, Balugodu, Harihara, Katta, Kallaje, Ainekidu are located in remote areas, at the foot of the ghats bordering Kodagu. The lockdown denied access to medicines for many patients in these villages from far away places like Mangaluru which is about 125 k.m. away.
The youths – Udaya Koppadkka, Udaya Shivala, Jayaprakash Kajjodi and Chalan Koppadkka – from those villages have been shuttling between Mangaluru, Puttur, Sullia and the villages over the past 10 days supplying medicines to the needy.
“We share the transportation cost among ourselves and collect only the medical bill from patients,” Mr. Udaya Shivala told The Hindu.
“In some cases we have not collected the medical bill from very poor patients,” Mr. Udaya Koppadkka who is also a member of Sullia Taluk Panchayat from Madappady constituency said. “We use our own vehicles to bring medicines,” Mr. Koppadkka said.
Mr. Shivala realised the difficulty in procuring the medicine when his father needed it during the lockdown. Mr. Koppadkka was moved when an 80-year-old neighbouring woman requested to get her medicine. Then they realised the seriousness and circulated their phone numbers in the villages informing that they would purchase and distribute.
“We have been getting 20 to 25 requests a day on WhatsApp,” Mr. Koppadkka said. Sullia Tahsildar, MLA and police have permitted them to go around during the lockdown.
On the other hand, in Balanja village in Belthangady taluk, Padmanabha Kulal, who is part of an ambulance service, does the same by collecting the prescriptions in advance in his and neighbouring villages and supplying medicines from Mangaluru. He too collects only the medical bill. “I got 30 requests on Tuesday,” he told The Hindu adding that he went once in a week to Mangaluru.