Dial Dr Courage during disaster

Not for him the antiseptic corridors of a big hospital. In fact, Ravikant Singh, 32, sets up his clinic in the midst of havoc - from flood-hit Bihar to riot-affected Assam.
When floods ravaged Bihar in 2007, Dr Ravikant Singh, a Patna boy studying medicine in Mumbai's KEM Hospital, gathered a few fellow doctors and rushed home to help. His goodwill mission was to be a one-off effort.But a tragic accident changed Singh's future course in medicine.
"One of my juniors, Chandrakant Patil, was the first to volunteer for Bihar ,'' recalls Singh, then pursuing his masters in preventive and social medicine . But lightning struck down Patil on a rainy night in Bihar's Supaul district. The medical mission was in disarray. The student-doctors rushed back to Mumbai. "But it soon struck me that I couldn't let his death go in vain,'' says Singh.
He returned to Bihar with another batch of doctors; the team kept up a relay of doctors for over six months.
And, Singh's tribute to his dead friend continues as he travels from one hotspot to another. He is the specialist one dials for medical relief during natural and manmade disasters. From Assam's ethnic violence-hit Kokrajhar district to Andhra's floods , he has visited disaster zones to provide medical assistance as well as train locals. "In the last two years, we must have trained over 2,000 people in Assam, Meghalaya, Sikkim, etc, on disaster preparedness,'' he says.
Along the way, Singh and his NGO, Doctors For You, have gathered many awards. The first was the British Medical Journal awards in 2011 - dubbed by the Brits as the Medical Oscars - for being the best medical team in a crisis situation. Then came the Saarc Youth Award - a first for an Indian. Now, the young doctor teaches disaster management at Tata Institute for Social Sciences, Mumbai, and D Y Patil University in Kolhapur. He is also part of many disaster management committees in various states.
"One lesson I picked up in all these years is that if your intentions are good, then support will come in,'' says Singh, at present getting "mentored'' in IIM-Calcutta after winning the Tata Social Enterprise Award. "Losing Chandrakant was a turning point. It made me realise the poor state of disaster management in India. Our country loses up to 2% of its GDP every year in disasters. Surely we can work towards lowering these losses.''