Parents’ Body Sends Medicine For Special Children In Covid Lockdown

Kalyani, May 25: A Kalyani based parents’ organization of special children has come up to send medicines for children suffering from different types of mental retardations since their guardians could not procure it in absence of updated prescriptions, apart from financial constraints due to the lockdown for Covid situation.

With many hospitals and therapy centres are either closed or not providing service due to the Covid threat, special children become the worst sufferers in absence of medicine.

Since the medicines administered to these special children mostly belong to the H1 category, the retailers do not sell it on prescriptions older than six months. As a result, a large number of children suffering from autism, cerebral palsy, spastic, down-syndrome, epilepsy have been struggling hard to survive.

To overcome the problem, Kalyani Life Institute, a parents’ organization has been collecting data of such children across the state through the special educators of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) in different districts and trying best to send them medicine with the support of voluntary organizations and individuals.

In this endeavour, the KLI has tied up with some online retailers, who have been arranging to supply medicines through its counters across the state handing over it to the support team for delivery. As a confirmation, the delivery of the medicine being photographed using GPS based camera that shows details of locations and later sent to the KLI authorities.  

Secretary of KLI Siddhartha Sankar Mukhopadhyay, a WBCS officer, said, “We came to know that the children suffering from sensory integration problem are not being administered medicines as their parents failed to procure it in either due to absence of updated prescriptions or owing to financial constraints caused for lockdown. Many parents from rural areas could make access to medicine shops in the absence of transportation. This was an eye-opener for us. We begin to inquire about such children”.

 “We started collecting data of such children by making contacts to the special educators of SSA projects posted in different districts and through different social organizations. We talked to their parents and supplied medicines and other needs at our cost”, said Mukhopadhyay.

“We meanwhile appealed state disability commissioner under state social welfare department for help, but they did not respond” he added.

Kamalika Sarkar, a speech-language therapist in Calcutta said, “Discontinuation of medicine and therapy due to Covid situation has already made a serious impact on special children. The neural development they achieved has seriously suffered causing an unfortunate recurrence of their problems in most cases”.

Ananda Biswas, father of an epileptic boy, who runs a book shop, said, “I am extremely grateful to the KLI team for the kind gesture they have shown by delivering the medicine at my doorstep for my son. In fact, they have saved his life”.