Today marks a month since 16-year-old Kshitij Velankar, an SSC student, was wheeled out of a Mumbai hospital after undergoing a life-saving surgery for two rare and life-threatening heart conditions—seen in only one in 50,000 people. Thanks to a consulting cardiologist at Holy Family Hospital in Bandra West, Kshitij was not only accurately diagnosed, but his entire surgery and hospital stay—approximately Rs 3 lakh—was provided free of cost by the hospital. When his father, an auto-rickshaw driver, and mother, a homemaker, expressed their inability to cover the approximately Rs 3 lakh treatment cost, the hospital and the cardiologist stepped in to help arrange funds.

Kshitij playing cricket with his friends