MUMBAI: To support its registered patients fighting Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) fundraise for their life-saving medicines, Cure SMA Foundation of India, a public charitable trust with pan India representation, has collaborated with ImpactGuru, India’s leading healthcare financing platform.
Amongst the SMA cases registered with Cure SMA Foundation of India were Teera Kamat, Dhairyarajsinh Rathod and Ayaansh Gupta that successfully raised funds on ImpactGuru
It was during November 2020, ImpactGuru witnessed its first-ever fundraiser dedicated towards covering the cost of Zolgensma at $2.1 million, a potential cure for children diagnosed with SMA Type 1.
Nearly Rs. 15 crore was raised from over 87,000 donors on Teera Kamat’s ImpactGuru fundraiser – a record-breaking amount raised for a single patient in India’s medical crowdfunding industry.
In April 2021, Dhairyarajsinh Rathod’s ImpactGuru fundraiser raised Rs. 16.24 crore from 2,64,714 donors. Ayaansh Gupta’s ImpactGuru fundraiser was also completed with Rs. 14.84 crore raised from over 62,495 kind donors from around the world.
Each year, Cure SMA Foundation of India supports SMA families through its newly diagnosed care and counselling, resource pool, SMA camps and supportive services, patient advocacy and many other direct family support services.
The community is extensively working to empower SMA patients and enable them to access existing services and facilities. Cure SMA Foundation of India have augmented their efforts to bring lifesaving SMA therapies to India.
Alpana Sharma, Co-Founder and Director Patient Advocacy, Cure SMA Foundation of India said, “There are 3 FDA approved treatments for SMA – Risdiplam, Zolgensma and Spinraza. These drugs are available to a handful of SMA patients in India as a part of CSR initiative of the pharmaceutical’s that are manufacturing these drugs. However, these are not accessible to the majority of Indian patients due to lack of insurance/reimbursement model for such genetic conditions. We firmly believe that this partnership between Cure SMA Foundation of India and ImpactGuru will be a huge step towards broader treatment access for the Indian SMA community.”
Khushboo Jain, Co-Founder and COO, ImpactGuru said, “ImpactGuru is currently running India’s biggest medical crowdfunding initiative – #IndiaFightsSMA. In the last 4 months, our healthcare financing platform has successfully helped fundraise Zolgensma for 3 SMA Type 1 cases. Our association with Cure SMA Foundation of India will work towards providing a ‘fighting chance’ to the Indian SMA community. There is tremendous scope to scale and we believe we’re just getting started!”
The Cure SMA Foundation of India
Cure SMA Foundation of India is a parent-led community, initiated in January 2014 by a small group of parents of children suffering from Spinal Muscular Atrophy, a rare genetic degenerative, life threatening, crippling neuromuscular disease. Parents of SMA warriors and adult SMA patients joined hands to raise awareness about the disease, building infrastructure for better management of the disease and advocating for broader access to available and approved treatment and clinical trials.
ImpactGuru is India’s leading healthcare financing platform for patients and raises money online for medical expenses via online crowdfunding such as COVID-19, cancer, transplants, and accidents. It aggregates a large number of online payments to allow any individual requiring financial assistance to raise funds for any social cause.
