At around 5.20pm, a queue begins forming behind Wenlock Government District Hospital in Mangaluru. Women, men and children arrive carrying steel plates, plastic containers and reusable boxes. When the vehicle marked ‘Karunya: Food for the Hungry’ arrives, more than 250 people move towards it, collect three chapatis and a serving of curry, and return quickly to the wards. The scene captures a largely invisible cost of public healthcare: while inpatients receive free food, the family members who care for them must still find money for their own meals.
The Karunya food distribution programme, run by the M. Friends Charitable Trust, has become an evening support system for these attendants. The trust says it serves an average of 400 people daily at Wenlock Hospital and around 100 people at the Government Lady Goschen Hospital for Women and Children. The programme costs approximately ₹2.5 lakh a month, according to trust executive president Sujah Mohammed.
The numbers are significant not only because of the quantity of food distributed, but because of who depends on it. Wenlock is a century-old government hospital that receives patients from Dakshina Kannada as well as Udupi, Chikkamagaluru, Shivamogga, Kodagu, Uttara Kannada and Haveri. Patients with long-term illnesses may remain in the city for weeks or months. Their attendants often travel from distant districts, interrupt work and spend on transport, medicines and other necessities while remaining close to the ward.
The hospital provides free food to inpatients. That arrangement, however, does not cover the people who stay beside them. For families already dealing with treatment costs and lost income, the price of daily meals becomes another recurring expense. The food queue behind the hospital is therefore not simply a charitable gathering. It is an informal support mechanism operating around a public institution whose formal service is centred on the patient.
One beneficiary, Babybai from Davanagere, had admitted her elder son to Wenlock for kidney treatment while caring for her younger child. She told the report that debt had accumulated around the treatment and that she was struggling to provide enough food for her children. Other attendants described similar pressure. Shivamogga-based daily-wage worker Ravikumar said the programme reduced his food-related worry. Sugandhi from Karkala said that avoiding hotel meals could save at least ₹150 a day, allowing the money to be used for fruit and other needs for the patient.
That figure illustrates how quickly an apparently modest expense can become substantial. A family spending ₹150 daily on an attendant’s food would spend about ₹4,500 over a month, before accounting for travel, accommodation, medicines or income lost while remaining at the hospital. The report does not establish how many attendants depend on outside food across the city, but the daily queue at Wenlock shows that the need is continuous rather than occasional.
### A hospital system supported from outside
The Karunya programme began in 2017 as a three-month initiative and continued through periods of severe disruption, including the Covid-19 crisis. The M. Friends team itself was formed in 2013 by like-minded residents, with social worker Rashid Vitla identified as its founder. Its initial work included financial assistance for patients unable to pay hospital bills and providing wheelchairs to people who needed them.
The food programme emerged after Dr Mubashir, a member of the team who had observed admissions at Wenlock closely, noticed that attendants were sometimes spending the day without food because they could not afford it. The trust’s account places the initiative within a wider pattern of voluntary support around government hospitals: community groups respond to needs that are real and immediate but not fully covered by the hospital’s inpatient services.
The arrangement also shows the importance of administrative coordination. Food is not distributed randomly. According to the report, tokens are given to patient attendants in the wards each afternoon by Suhaan of S.K. Catering, which supplies the meals. The token count determines whether approximately 1,500 to 2,000 chapatis or idlis are prepared. Distribution at Wenlock begins at 5.30pm and is completed within about half an hour.
Children’s wards are handled differently. Karunya volunteers take the food directly to the wards and hand it to mothers. The programme expanded to Lady Goschen Hospital in November last year, extending the same support to attendants at a women’s and children’s hospital. This ward-level adjustment is important because access to a queue is not equally easy for every caregiver, especially those looking after children or patients with limited mobility.
The system is consequently more than a one-time donation. It involves identifying beneficiaries, estimating demand, preparing food, coordinating delivery and ensuring that the service reaches the intended group within a narrow evening window. Its regularity has allowed families to treat it as part of their daily planning.
### The funding challenge behind continuity
The trust says the programme is supported by 72 members, membership fees and contributions from financially able supporters. It also relies on donors who associate their birthdays, wedding anniversaries and other occasions with the service. Mohammed described a fundraising practice during Ramadan in which a message circulated through a WhatsApp group led to commitments covering a year of food distribution. The target was approximately ₹30 lakh, according to the report.
This funding model reveals both the strength and fragility of community-supported welfare. The service can respond quickly because it is not dependent on a long government procurement cycle. It can also draw on personal relationships and recurring acts of giving. At the same time, its continuity depends on sustained voluntary contributions, member participation and public trust.
The reported monthly cost of ₹2.5 lakh and the annual fundraising target of ₹30 lakh are broadly aligned. Together, they indicate the scale of the commitment required to keep the service running for a year. The figures also make clear that the intervention is not symbolic. Feeding hundreds of people each day requires a predictable financial base and an operating arrangement capable of absorbing changes in demand.
The report does not state whether the hospitals provide space, permission, monitoring or other institutional support to the programme. It does show that the service operates at hospital premises and that ward-level distribution occurs for children’s patients. The available account therefore establishes a working relationship between the trust, food supplier, volunteers and hospital users, while leaving the formal administrative framework unspecified.
### The wider urban geography of treatment
Wenlock’s catchment extends beyond Mangaluru. Patients and attendants arrive from several districts, which means that the hospital’s social infrastructure is shaped by regional mobility as much as by local healthcare demand. Families travelling from Davanagere, Shivamogga, Karkala and other places may not have relatives nearby or a stable support network in the city. The attendant who waits outside a ward is also navigating an unfamiliar urban environment while managing a medical emergency.
That geography changes the meaning of food assistance. For a local resident, a meal may be an ordinary household expense. For a family staying near a hospital far from home, it is part of a larger survival budget. The cost is repeated every day, and the need does not end when the patient is admitted. In chronic or long-term cases, the duration of stay magnifies the burden.
The queue also demonstrates how the experience of public healthcare extends beyond clinical treatment. A hospital’s formal indicators may focus on admissions, procedures, beds or medicines. The daily experience of the family, however, includes food, transport, waiting space and the ability to remain physically present beside the patient. These needs influence whether an attendant can continue providing care and whether a family can sustain a prolonged hospital stay.
The Karunya programme does not replace those wider requirements. It addresses one specific cost: the evening meal for attendants. Its value lies in making that cost manageable and predictable. The reported beneficiaries can return to their wards after collecting food, while the trust can plan quantities through tokens and supplier coordination.
### From food support to a broader civic role
The M. Friends Charitable Trust’s work extends beyond Karunya. Its ‘Class on Wheels’ mobile computer bus provides free computer education to children in government schools and slum areas, according to the report. The two initiatives address different forms of disadvantage: immediate food insecurity among hospital families and limited access to digital learning among children.
Together, they illustrate how civic groups often operate across gaps in the urban welfare system. Their interventions are local, targeted and built around direct observation. In the hospital case, the programme began after volunteers saw attendants going hungry. In the education initiative, the response is organised around access to computers and instruction for children who may not otherwise receive it.
The deeper urban question is not whether charity can be useful. The queue at Wenlock shows that it can. The question is what the queue reveals about the cost of accessing public healthcare for families who come from outside the city. When a patient’s food is covered but the attendant’s meal is not, the burden shifts to households already facing treatment-related expenses and lost earnings.
The evidence in the report confirms that Karunya has operated continuously for about nine years, serves around 500 people each day across two hospitals, and relies on an organised network of volunteers, donors and a food supplier. It does not establish the full scale of unmet food or accommodation needs around Wenlock, nor the formal role of the hospitals in the programme. Those remain questions for further documentation. For now, the daily evening queue makes one fact visible: public healthcare is sustained not only inside wards, but also by the informal systems that help families remain beside them.
