Illinois-based Philanthropic Physician Flies An Extra Mile To Serve Mankind

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Chicago, IL – Growing up in India, Chandrakant M. Modi’s father encouraged him to go into medicine because he could earn a decent living while also helping the needy. He more than achieved both objectives here in the United States.

Apart from his professional success of the last 20 years, as a pathologist and in emergency medicine, Dr. Modi has helped people in distant lands going on numerous missions with the Idaho-based non-profit, Flying Doctors of America, a division of Medical Mercy Missions, Inc., to villages in Haiti, Madagascar, the Amazon, Panama, Jordan and the borders between India and Tibet.

“The trips to provide medical care have been very rewarding,” Dr. Modi, now an energetic septuagenarian living in Skokie, Ill., is quoted saying in a press release from Asian Media USA. “The people in underserved areas need care, and they appreciate our presence. Our missions bring hope and healing to the poorest of poor people,” he added. To this day Dr. Modi treasures a comb made from animal bone, presented to him by a tribal chief on one of his missions in the Amazon Jungle basin. “I didn’t need it (comb) but it was given from the heart. I still have it, and consider it one of my most valuable possessions.”

Flying Doctors organizes mercy missions about half-dozen times a year to remote areas where residents do not have regular access to medical care. Doctors, nurses, dentists and on-ground support personnel pay their own fares. The medication they dispense is also purchased from private health-care companies based in the U.S.

Among the future missions planned by Flying Doctors, are trips to Panama, Guyana, Peru, and a women’s prison in Bolivia, according to the press release, which added that Dr. Modi is also avid traveler and has explored all seven continents including Antarctica and more than 100 countries.

In 2009 Dr. Modi received the President’s Circle Award given by Flying Doctors of America, in recognition of his contribution.