Bhaktivedanta Hospital - Origin

Origin

Bhaktivedanta Hospital was the vision of a few dedicated doctors, under the inspiration of Radhanath Swami, a disciple of Swami Prabhupada. As undergraduate students, they held free medical camps in the slums and villages around Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. Way back in 1986, immediately after completing their specializations in various medical fields, a like-minded dream weaved them further together. This collective dream was to provide quality holistic health-care to the medically deprived people at a very affordable cost. Making this choice over the allurements of flourishing careers, they remained united after graduation to accomplish their mission — to help people have better lives. Initially, these doctors traveled from slum to slum, village to village — holding free medical camps. Driven by the same motivation and the higher purpose of providing holistic care (physical, mental, spiritual, palliative/hospice), the group gradually evolved into a nursing home and finally the Bhaktivedanta Hospital.

The Bhaktivedanta Hospital was opened on 11 January 1998. The hospital, in addition to providing free treatment to the physical body, also pledges to provide free spiritual care for all — the privileged and the unprivileged alike. The Hospital, now known for the quality of its community outreach programs, also conducts the annual free Barsana Eye Camp and the Pandharpur Camp in far-off places. And for providing spiritual care, the hospital has a department exclusively devoted for that purpose — The Department for Spiritual Care — making it unique in the entire world.

Read more about this topic:  Bhaktivedanta Hospital

Famous quotes containing the word origin:

    We have got rid of the fetish of the divine right of kings, and that slavery is of divine origin and authority. But the divine right of property has taken its place. The tendency plainly is towards ... “a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.”
    Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)

    Art is good when it springs from necessity. This kind of origin is the guarantee of its value; there is no other.
    Neal Cassady (1926–1968)

    The real, then, is that which, sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally result in, and which is therefore independent of the vagaries of me and you. Thus, the very origin of the conception of reality shows that this conception essentially involves the notion of a COMMUNITY, without definite limits, and capable of a definite increase of knowledge.
    Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)