By Matters India reporter
New Delhi: Caritas India plans to intensify its campaign on cancer during the Lenten season.
The social service wing of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI) uses the Lenten time to campaign on social issues and advocate changes.
Father Frederick D’Souza, executive director of Caritas India, says they have chosen the slogan, “Say yes to life, no to cancer,” for this year’s Lenten campaign against hunger and disease. It is rooted in the Church belief in the fullness of life and its mandate to advocate for protecting and nurturing life, he added.
The Lenten season in 2017 begins with Ash Wednesday on March 1 and end on April 15.
The National Cancer Registry Programme of the India Council of Medical Research shows that ndia has around 2.5 million cancer patients, with more than 700,000 new patients being registered every year. The country also reports 556,400 cancer-related deaths every year.
The top five cancers in men and women account for 47.2 percent of all cancers, which are preventable and curable if screened, detected and treated at early stage.
Caritas India began its fight against cancer with the launch of Ashakiranam (ray of hope) Cancer Care Campaign on March 8, 2014, in Kerala, the southern Indian state that reports more than 35,000 cancer cases every year. This campaign focuses on home based palliative support and promotion of good food.
The mass campaign engages about 900 volunteers comprising school students, cancer survivors, health care and education professionals and institutions, agricultural experts, artists and common people, from across ages and diverse backgrounds, who volunteer their time and resources to help cancer patients.
The campaign soon became known as an effective social model in Kerala. It is now being spearheaded in the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu.
Caritas Cancer Campaign underlines the power of love in the fight against cancer in India. Through a network of more than 200 member organizations across the country, Caritas Cancer Campaign in 2017 will promote awareness, early detection drives, behavioral and lifestyle change, promote good food, financial assistance to poorest of the poor patients, psycho social support and homes based palliative care, and volunteerism.
The campaign takes the message of life. It is an attitude and action in faith, Father D’Souza said.
Every year, Caritas India invests more than 95 percent of its total funds mobilized through the Lenten Campaign in various development initiative including health, emergency relief and rehabilitation, education, and sustainable agricultural and food security.
Caritas India, founded in 1962, is a member of Caritas confederation of more than 160 member organizations working in nearly 200 countries, making it the second largest humanitarian network in the world.
Steered by the Gospel principles of love and compassion, and rooted in the commitment for inalienable human rights and social justice, Caritas India has worked in a mission mode, to alleviate human suffering. It believes that there is a close relationship between poverty and the denial of human rights and fundamental freedom, where lack of human rights and fundamental freedom can be both a cause and consequence of poverty.
Since its inception, Caritas India has been unique in its strategic responsiveness to emerging social challenges in international and national levels by engaging with social researchers, proponents and the policy makers.
Propelled by the commitment to preserve the dignity and sacredness of human personality, Caritas India has serves the underprivileged sections of the society, hailing from socially excluded communities, the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes, and religious minorities by exercising preferential actions for the most marginalized.
Reluctantly, with a large spectrum of development interventions across the country, Caritas India is recognized as a leading NGO in poverty alleviation through Community Managed Disaster Risk Reduction and Natural Resource Management.
The operations of Caritas India were initiated through disaster response during the Bangladesh Refugee crisis in 1971, but over five decades of experiences in the field led to diversification and up-scaling of interventions.
The present interventions are in the areas of livelihood security, climate change adaptation through natural resource management and sustainable agricultural practices, disaster risk reduction and emergency response, good governance through political participation, anti-human trafficking, peace-building and health care with focus on HIV/AIDS, Malaria, Tuberculosis and other communicable diseases.
In the past five decades, Caritas India has contributed significantly to nation building by supporting 22,945 projects to tune of 13.73 billion rupees.
With a shift from charity and welfare mode to Rights Based Approach, the strategic role of Caritas India has gone beyond funding the projects, hand-holding hundreds of development organizations to increasing their capacities for achieving greater levels of effectiveness whilst upholding organizational autonomy, the director claimed.