KICKER: RADIO RENEWS FAMILY TIES FOR ABANDONED ELDERLY
STEPHEN/ANCHOR: Our final story looks at what may well be the highest
and best use of amateur radio - helping people in distress. One amateur
radio club in India has begun serving the community under especially
poignant circumstances: they are helping elderly men and women who've
been abandoned to find their way back home. Jason Daniels, VK2LAW, has
those details.
JASON: For amateur radio to help save lives, as it often does, sometimes
even a transceiver, and an antenna alone, prove insufficient. In India,
the best equipment for this task now comes in the form of something called
an Aadhaar card. It's a government-issued card that uses the biometrics of
fingerprints and iris scans to identify people, linking them as well to a unique
12-digit ID number.
The West Bengal Amateur Radio Club is finding that card even more useful
than a linear amplifier or digital signal processor for their latest
project - assisting the abandoned elderly. Media reports in India show
that, tragically, such cases are on the rise in a nation of more than 90 million
older adults.
Ambarish Nag Biswas, VU2JFA, told the News 18 India newspaper that
fingerprinting the elderly, and finding a residential address in the
records helps make reunions easier. The club has been assisting police
with these reunions.
The West Bengal hams have helped bring about other reunions, including
one earlier this year, in which a 35-year-old woman who'd spent four
years in a psychiatric hospital, was returned to her family, 900 miles
away.
With abandonment of elderly family members on the rise however, Ambarish
Nag Biswas said working with the police has proven especially satisfying
work in helping bring the very oldest family members back home, often
across state borders. He told News 18 India that two of the most memorable cases
involved older women abandoned by their families two years earlier.
For Amateur Radio Newsline, I'm Jason Daniels, VK2LAW.
(NEWS18 INDIA)
**
NEWSCAST CLOSE: With thanks to Alan Labs; Amateur News Weekly; the ARRL;
CQ Magazine; the Eastern Daily Press; Hap Holly and the Rain Report; the
Hindu newspaper; Irish Radio Transmitters Society; News 18 India; Ohio
Penn DX Bulletin; Southgate Amateur Radio News; Ted Randall's QSO Radio
Show; the Times of India; Wireless Institute of Australia; WTWW
Shortwave; and you, our listeners, that's all from the Amateur Radio
Newsline. Please send emails to our address at newsline@arnewsline.org.
More information is available at Amateur Radio Newsline's only official
website located at www.arnewsline.org.
For now, with Caryn Eve Murray, KD2GUT, at the news desk in New York,
and our news team worldwide, I'm Stephen Kinford, N8WB, in Wadsworth,
Ohio, saying 73, and as always, we thank you for listening.
Amateur Radio Newsline(tm) is Copyright 2017. All rights reserved.
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