KT's Story

All fellow Rotarians,

I have been a member of Spring Branch Memorial Rotary club for about 8 yrs. now and I enjoy attending Rotary meetings. I am particularly attracted by the mission of Rotary-- which is SERVICE. With that in mind I am writing this short summary of my medical charity work in India and in Houston.

For last 26 years, I have been going to India (to my home city of Ahmedabad and my home state of Gujarat) every year for about 6 to 8 weeks. I do volunteer medical work-- especially, providing consultation and performing gastrointestinal endoscopy (gastroscopy and colonoscopy) These services are performed free of charge. I work for 2-3 weeks each in the cities of Ahmedabad and Bhavnagar in Gujarat, which is my father's home town. In total I examine about 200-300 patients and perform about 100-150 endoscopy procedures. Many of these patients have very limited financial resources. Because of this, there are many times I also pay for their medicines, many of which may require 4 week to 12 month cycles. I am very happy to do this and it gives me great satisfaction. I bear all the expenses myself, do not receive any government help, and rarely receive private assistance.

I practiced Gastroenterology and Internal Medicine here in Houston for 31 years -- from 1973 to 2004.

I wanted to give back to this community, so I deliberately took retirement in 2005. Since then, I have been working as a volunteer physician at several Houston area charity clinics, where I see patients completely free of charge. Again, I am very happy to do this and it gives me great satisfaction.

This is why I like SPIRIT OF ROTARY which is SERVICE.

I thank you for giving me chance to describe my activity.