Ahmedabad: 'Saint in white coat' enters 100th year

AHMEDABAD: She has served the rich merchants to the poor squatters of the Walled City with love and care for more than six decades. Dr Iris Fonseca, the heart of the Fonseca clinic in Teen Darwaza, decided to take a break and is now spending her time at the Sandhya Deep Home for the aged in Mirzapur, a stone's throw away from her two-storey clinic just opposite Bhatiyar Gali.
On Wednesday, she entered her 100th year, and her distant relatives, friends and locals poured into the old age home to celebrate her life.
"I decided to take a break after I suffered two falls and fractured a few bones," she says. "At 99, my bones are brittle, and I have been advised rest."
Dr Iris, often referred to as the 'saint in white coat', had moved into the old age home four years ago to be with her sister.
"She moved into the old age home to be with her sister Joyce. After her accidents, her family members had insisted that she take a break. But three years ago, her sister died following a heart attack. We wanted Dr Iris's 99th birthday to be special and hence the celebration," said Sister Arpita of Sandhya Deep Home for the aged.
Since 1933, Dr Iris's clinic has been treating the poor free of cost and charging only nominally for medicines -- "just Rs 20" -- from those who could afford to pay for it. "We used to charge patients only to meet the basic expenses of the clinic," Iris said.
"I continue to follow in the footsteps of my father, Leo Fonseca, who was a medical doctor from Bombay University."
She now misses sitting at her father's 90-year-old medicine table at the clinic. "I remember accompanying my father every day to the slums on the banks of Sabarmati, where we offered treatment and helped deliver babies. My father would charge these families nothing," she said. "This is what we learnt from him: respecting the poor. It is hard to live a poor man's life. And I love the Walled City because I have learned my biggest life lessons here." Since the locals could not pronounce 'Fonseca', they called the clinic Fancy Hospital.