Dileep Mavalankar, Panacea was aimed towards attaining two important missions; first creating awareness among students about opportunities in healthcare & pharmaceutical industry & secondly initiating the activities that ensure better health of IIM-A community. While it has stood up to its foundation objective by conducting guest sessions by eminent personalities in healthcare industry and assisting students in their placements with the healthcare sector, it also focuses on improving the overall health standards for students on campus. It conducts health check-up camps, organizes sessions and workshops for prevention of diseases and provides medicine kits to every dorm with necessary OTC drugs. Panacea also conducts “Hepatitis-A vaccination drive” which ensures all the students are protected against this commonly occurring preventable communicable disease. Regular newsletters are released to serve the dual objective of creating awareness about the latest happenings in healthcare and pharma industry while suggesting the common healthcare measures for seasonal diseases to students. Panacea also believes in giving back to the society. It conducts 2 blood donations camps every year through active promotion and collaboration with blood banks. In the past two blood donation camps conducted on 1st March and 15th August 2015, 64 and 91 units of blood were collected with 232 being the all-time record for our institute. The blood was donated for the treatment of needy cancer patients at Gujarat Cancer Research Institute. Entire IIM-A community participated in these blood donation camps and it was well recognized and appreciated by the community. Panacea also looks forward to organize free health and dental check-up for the SMILE kids every year through collaboration with hospitals and healthcare companies. Panacea believes in incentivizing students to cultivate the habit of contributing to the society through its initiatives. It collaborates with corporates to sponsor its events and provide mementos to those who contribute as a token of appreciation and remembrance. For the past two blood donation camps, in collaboration with State Bank of India, it presented every donor with gifts acknowledging them as donors in addition to donation certificates, donor cards and best quality refreshments with the help of Aradhana Hospitality. Panacea aims to make IIM-A a healthy campus and hence conducted an online health risk assessment with Remedy Social and 5-day free Yoga workshop. It also plans to distribute first-aid kits to all dorms and collaborate with hospitals for free health check-up of students. It also aims at developing its own website which would constantly update the students about the latest happenings in the world of healthcare and pharma along with the M&A activity. The website would aim at developing interest of students towards the highly promising healthcare and pharma sector which has traditionally not been an area of focus as far as placements are concerned at IIM-A. Having grown from a team of 4 in 2009-10 to 17 in 2015-16, Panacea aims to be the most active club on campus and achieve its twin objectives of making IIMA a healthier place and bridging the gap between healthcare and pharma sectors and the students to ensure higher number of placements in this sector. Since its inception, Panacea has highlighted its presence and importance among the IIM-A community through its useful activities and strives to continue them incessantly.
