Ambala, June 27: At 68, Ravinder K Bansal will fly solo across the world, for a cause.
On July 4, the Haryana-origin retired businessman will take off in his single-engine Cessna 400 from Buffalo Niagara International Airport in the US to raise $750,000 (Rs 4.83 crore) for a hospital in his hometown of Ambala.
The aim of the 19,878-mile (31,990-km) trip is to generate funds to buy an MRI machine for the Rotary Ambala Cancer and General Hospital, set up in 2005.
“It’s not only an adventure that I have been dreaming about for a while, but will also get the hospital the much-needed magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) equipment. It will help generate awareness about cancer in villages around Ambala,” he says in an email interview.
“I grew up in Kasauli and Ambala. Both places are forever etched in my memory. My father, Dr Chater Muni Bansal, was the lone private physician at Kasauli, where I did my schooling. I shifted to Ambala to attend SD College and stayed with my elder brother, Subhash, and his wife, Sneh. She was like an elder sister and the kindest person I know. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1997 and died in 2012, but while going through chemotherapy (for which she had to go to Ludhiana often), she provided the spark that led Ambala Rotarians to set up the Rotary Ambala Cancer and General Hospital,” he says.
“To me, helping this 100-bed hospital, which provides healthcare at a nominal cost, is to honour her. That’s why I’m taking this flight,” Bansal says of his mission.
News Source: http://www.hindustantimes.com
