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| Sunday, 24 November 2002 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Standard Chartered's humanitarian deeds by Jayanthi Liyanage Life is worth living. Every precious moment of it. Even when the moments are ticking faster than they usually do. We, for whom the free gift of life flows lavishly, take it for granted. But than those lives which are slashed by the remorseless knife of terminal illness, feel its excruciatingly evading utility deeper. Though painful, these are moments which can be filled with hope, comfort, usefulness and improved endurance through faster access to new diagnostic and therapeutic technology, and medication. And more often than you would think, one seemingly insignificant step can trigger the entire process of a lasting cure, joy and laughter. This was what the Staff Cancer Society of the former Grindlays Bank had in mind when they offered to maintain the Wards 15B and 4 of Maharagama Cancer Hospital. The staff of the now amalgamated standard Chartered gathered at the hospital once again, a few weeks ago, as they have done for the past eight years, bringing this time to its child patients, gifts of a Colour Television, TV stand, medicine and food items. More crucially, they also brought in the facility of a Heavy Duty Suction Unit and tables and chairs for the ward doctors. The moment was made more poignant by the news they just received on ward. The sad death of one of their own female colleagues at the whiplash of cancer. The bank's gesture of concern for social well-being embodied what a corporate chief had voiced not so long ago, "Voluntary action by business is the most sustainable way in which companies can build their trust with their key stakeholders" of employees, customers, investors, local communities and others. Business for social responsibility brings the reward of building up the business's corporate responsibility credentials, an advertorial in itself. "This is a project to which the Bank staff has contributed most enthusiastically," said Wasim Saifi, the bank's Chief Executive Officer/General Manager. "We want to take this concept beyond the staff-level to the customer so that our customers can join hands with us in caring for the cancer patients at these wards." In Sri Lanka, one person in every ten, dies of cancer and the high number of cancer patients could outweigh the country's only and fully-fledged national cancer hospital's capacity to diagnose and treat them in time while 70 per cent of cancer can be cured if detected early. The Staff Cancer Society is the brainchild of L.A.L. Perera, retired President/Manager of Grindlays Bank in 1994. He has dedicatedly continued the concept down the years through the Grindlays-Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) merger to the present corporate structure of SCB, with help from the project's spearhead members, A.H.M. Fariz, N. Kiridena, Shahana Fernando, Ramani Athapattu and the late Lalith. Dissanayake. Over the years, the society has renovated and equipped an intensive care unit, donated a heavy duty nebulizer and tiled and painted a ward, among other donations. Presently Nilanthi Perera, Haris Rahuman and M.F. Osman, Head of Finance are actively involved in this project. "If the corporate sector takes care of maintaining the wards, it is a big relief to the Government as then, the hospital can concentrate its funds mainly on medicine," Perera says. "We would like to see the rest of the corporate world doing the same." "The yearly recurrent expenditure of the Cancer Hospital is Rs. 360M which is provided by the Ministry," the Hospital's Director, Dr. Yasantha Ariyaratne, confirms, adding, "The private sector can help us by sponsoring janitorial services, maintaining wards and providing drugs the Consultants prescribe for special reasons." The hospital-owned, ten-year-old CT Scanner does not function well and a new one could cost nearly Rs. 45 million. "But don't give donations in an ad hoc manner, without consulting us beforehand," requests Dr.Ariyaratne. "Or else, we will end up with surpluses and duplicates. The Government is giving us a four-storey building for day care patients and education activities which will be completed next year." Which will be an ideal venture to ignite the corporate conscience for social care - in furniture, fittings and small machinery. |
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