By Robert L. Smith, The Plain Dealer
As they prepare for an upcoming, month-long trip to India, Ramesh and Jaya Shah are packing for a disaster.
Their clothes and personal belongings will go into one small bag. Suitcase space is needed for essentials: medicine, antibiotics, bandages and blood-sugar testing kits.
If the Mayfield retirees travel like pilgrims, they arrive like saviors. The Shahs are leaders of medical mercy missions. They blaze a path of health care through some of the poorest corners of the world.
Jaya Shah, a pediatrician, and Ramesh Shah, a retired mortgage specialist, will soon embark upon their sixth medical yatra -- or pilgrimage. They will lead a team of about three dozen doctors and volunteers -- including surgeons from the Cleveland Clinic -- to rural India to examine about 9,000 patients.
They will help identify diabetes and hypertension, deliver babies, fill cavities, train local surgeons in modern techniques and enlighten people who sometimes are more helpless than sick.
"They walk around thinking they're blind. They have cataracts," Jaya Shah said. "Some of these villagers are too poor to take the bus to the city to get treatment."
The Shahs learned the inequality of health care through experience. Their crusades began in 2004, when a tsunami ravaged a swath of India and the couple felt compelled to help the motherland.
They tapped the region's large Asian Indian medical community and a tradition took root. The Shahs emerged as leaders of medical yatras for AIPNO, the Association of Indian Physicians of Northern Ohio.
They have since led medical mercy missions to Africa, to Haiti and to post-Katrina New Orleans, adding a fulfilling denouement to a busy life.
The couple emigrated from India in 1969 and raised two children in their home of 32 years. Daughter Bella teaches at Laurel School in Shaker Heights. Son Baiju runs the region's high-tech incubator, BioEnterprise.
"Everyone would like to do something for other people. I feel we all have that desire in a box inside of us," Ramesh Shah said. "When you approach retirement, you have time to open that box."
Jaya Shah said her second career is even more rewarding than her first.
"I feel I'm using my medical degree the right way now," she said.
To contribute to the effort, call the AIPNO office at 216-228-1168.