Those who aspire to become a doctor, the first thing that they say is, “When I become a doctor, I would give free treatment to the patients or I would charge a minimal fee from poverty-stricken people.” But the reality is that most of them wouldn’t keep up the word. It’s a fact!
However, there are few doctors who have been charging very less from poor patients for so many years. A few months ago, Dr S Jayachandran from Chennai drew his last breath and he was famously known as ‘two-rupee’ doctor because he was charging only Rs 2 as consultation fee for his patients. Now following his footprints, Kallesh Murashilin is well known as ‘10 rupee doctor’ in his village.
Kallesh is a doctor in Mallasamudra village in Karnataka and charges Rs 10 for poor patients and sometimes he doesn’t charge anyone at all. Not for once or twice, he has been doing this for the past 22 years. Now he is on an important mission to assist the people those who come from economically backward sections of the society to get low-cost medical facilities.
He took on the marvellous initiative to treat the poor patients for a less charge as he himself comes from a poor background and had seen people of his locality suffer from diseases as they were unable to afford high-cost medical facilities and treatment. In a bid to tackle the financial crisis, he used to sell milk and take up part-time jobs while he was pursuing his degree, reported The New Indian Express
“I faced a tough time during my school and college days. We have a small farm. I bought cattle and sold milk to pursue my education,” Kallesh told TNIE. “I saw many poor people suffering from diseases and they had no money for treatment,” he said, adding how before joining BAMS, he plied his trade as an assistant with Dr. P C Chappanmath who was from Mallasamudra, which is a small drought-prone village where people suffered from severe poverty.
“After finishing my BAMS, I still had pictures of those impoverished people in my mind. So I decided to serve the poor and selected Mallasamudra village,” he said.
Dr. Kallesh comes to the village on his cycle on a regular basis and creates awareness among other people too, to use cycle ‘as a mode of transport’ in order to lead a healthy life.
“Our doctor is a really good human being. He visits the houses of the elderly and the specially-abled, and doesn’t charge anything,” Shanraappa Yali, a Mallasamudra resident, told TNIE and also said that Kallesh often also distributes medicines for free. “We often try to force him to accept the payment for medicines at least, but he has always declined. He is a role model for all of us,” Shanraappa added.
