Kolhapur Camp
Kolhapur Medical and Healthcare Camp (KMHC) is an annual event which began in 2004 and is being continuously carried out till date. The location of KMHC is Pendakhale, a small, remote village situated 30 kilometres away from the city of Kolhapur.
Under the guidance of Sadguru Shree Aniruddha, a team of around 150 doctors, 300 paramedics and 3,000 volunteers work hard to provide basic medical and healthcare facilities to about 30,000 villagers from over a hundred remote villages in around Pendakhale.
At the camp, the volunteers are distributed into various teams. Each team travels to 2-3 different villages to distribute clothes, medicines, toys and hygiene material to the villagers. Due to the unavailability of a mobile network, a team from one village can’t communicate with the other teams or the base camp. For this purpose, one or two Hams are assigned to each volunteer team. These Hams communicate with each other and with the base camp using the VHF/UHF radio.
These villages are situated in the mountain ranges of the Sahyadri. The average height of these mountains is around 800 metres (2700 ft). Hence, setting up a network here is a challenging task. However, ARCAD and the DMVs have been successful at doing it, and the use of Ham Radio has augmented the coordination of the mega healthcare camp over the last few years.