With my internship going on at Rabindra Nath Tagore Medical College and Maharana Bhupal Hospital, Udaipur, I am currently posted in the Department of Paediatrics.
There was a small girl aged around 3 years admitted in the ward with pulmonary tuberculosis. She had been in the ward for the last 18 days and it was my first day in that ward. The girl had to be discharged and I called for her attendants to educate them about the medication schedule. I was shocked to find that the girl was accompanied by just her brother who was 10 years old.
They had come from a village, some 70 odd kilometers away from Udaipur. Out of curiosity I started asking that boy for some more details. He told that he had got his sister admitted here for the third time in the last year. I asked him about their parents and about what he did. Then came the ultimate shock. He said his mother conspired along with some man and killed his father and then left the two children and ran away. He does cleaning work in a marble factory and tries to bring home at least one meal a day. His grand mother lives with them. She is very old and just about manages to make rotis from the aata he brings.
Even if he can't get medicines for free or on subsidy, he pledges to buy all the medicines and wants to see his sister back normal again. He couldn't easily find a free Tuberculosis drugs (DOTS) distributor near his village and the one he found, asked for Vitamin M (money) from an already deficient kid.
How easy it could have been for him to leave her sister somewhere and run away or even run away from home himself and earn and have it all by himself. I don't want to be preaching here, but flashes of news articles about female foeticide did whoosh through my mind. Life isn't always easy but may be it won't be worth living that way. This incident I feel is going to serve as a motivation for me through my life.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
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