When TB Patients Danced to a Rhys Lewis Song
RBN Web Desk: In what could probably be the first of its kind performance, patients with TB and several other life-threatening diseases being treated by a Kolkata-based NGO, recently broke into a dance to a Rhys Lewis song. The video of the dance was released over the internet earlier this month.
The video was inspired by two women who were cured of TB last year by Calcutta Rescue. They broke into an impromptu dance in the middle of the NGO’s TB clinic, surrounded by patients wearing masks to prevent the spread of this potentially fatal disease. They were joined by patients with leprosy and several other conditions, and doctors, aid workers, young people from the Kolkata slums, and schoolchildren and staff from the projects run by the organisation in and around the city.
The most interesting part of the video was a 90-year old woman, recovering from a hip surgery, dancing to Lewis’ Living in the City.
Lewis backed the project from the beginning and allowed to use the song for free. British photographer and musician Jake Roos volunteered to visit Kolkata and shoot the video. It was shot at all the 12 locations around the city where Calcutta Rescue works, from the roof of a school in a red-light district, to a mobile clinic parked at one of the city’s most deprived slums.
Calcutta Rescue has to work under challenging conditions. It still manages to cure people suffering from near-fatal illnesses, and provides medical care and pain-relief for everything from leprosy to fractured limbs.
