With the COVID-19 pandemic claiming the lives of many cancer patients, and leaving many others seeking treatment stranded across India during the lockdown, the Cancer Patients Aid Association (CPAA) has organised an online music concert to mobilise funds for underprivileged cancer patients.
Popular singers Shaan (Shantanu Mukherjee), Kunal Ganjawala, and Neha Bhasin, sibling composers Salim-Sulaiman, among others, will be performing for the ‘Yes To Life, No To Tobacco’ concert to be live-streamed on June 7, 2020 from 8 p.m. onward. Donations can be made at www.cancer.org.in
“This is our collective effort to create awareness. It is also our tribute to the mammoth struggle and efforts of the CPAA, the World Health Organization, the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, and the entire [fraternity of] medical and health workers in these times of global crisis,” said playback singer Kunal Ganjawala.
Singer Shaan said, “I have been associated with CPAA for 10 years. The concert is to create awareness and support cancer patients battling COVID-19. It also our tribute to the people who have been trying their best to save our nation from COVID-19.”
Anita Peter, executive director, CPAA, said: “We have been working in the field of cancer for the last 50 years. We have been helping more than 3,000 oral and lung cancer patients annually. Tobacco users are more at risk from COVID-19 as smoking weakens their lungs.”
The funds raised by the concert will be used, among other things, for patients who had travelled to Mumbai for cancer treatment and were stranded in the city because of lockdown regulations. The CPAA said it had been providing them with monthly ration supplies, providing assistance on finding accommodation, and handing out hygiene kits with masks and sanitisers.
Salim Merchant of Salim-Sulaiman said, “‘Yes To Life, No To Tobacco’ is an unprecedented musical concert [expressing] our solidarity and love towards cancer patients who are fighting COVID-19.”
“The concert assumes significance as it offers 150 minutes of non-stop entertainment along with informative content from the WHO and the CPAA,” the organisers said in a statement.