Thursday, August 5, 2010

India as haven for medical care for Africa and Middle East

We read the story with glee that Aisha a young girl who chose to run away from Taliban and be a child bride lost Her nose and ears as punishment from the Taliban.She is lucky she did not get killed.Yes she will be in united states and will be treated by some generous hospital and doctors at a great fan fare and cost to some donor or government. Then she will be frustrated and would miss her town and extended family.Will have hard time to choose among all the choices .Some of us find it hard to do even when we have lived here forty years.
Then unless she finds a compatible mate she will choose to go back and again be victim of the Talibanised society in Afghanistan.This great publicity only hurts her chances of recovery and normal life and that's all she is asking for.

A better choice would have been her surgery an hour away in India.Where cultures are similar and even language is easier to learn for an afghan.With prevalence of Indian Movies and millions who had fled to Pakistan and India at different times ,most afghans have familiarity with Indian culture.

I just remember a few years back,must be in early nineties Dad had a friend in Attelboro Barbara who's adult daughter was a missionary of Anand Marga a monastic Hindu missionary order in Kenya(Mombasa).She was running a school in a village .Not unusual for any missionary.She had a woman in her school who was helping in daily operations.This woman is outstanding missionary and has made us all proud of her service.She created small ponds for storing rain water in villages and provided care to many children who born of Parents with AIDS.A Japanese benefactor was helping her to take these orphans.She owned a truck to facilitate the work of the school and the mission.
Back to the Kenyan woman who was her helper .She started loosing her eyesight .I was part of the lions club in Attelboro and i talked with other members about this woman's dilemma.Lions club leadership(our president was class fellow of Missionary) decided to help this Kenyan woman as the need was of sight and that is the charity of the Lions Club.
On further investigation we found out that reason for loss of sight was that this woman had a non malignant tumor in the Brain which was putting pressure on her optical nerves.She started to loose sight quickly and we found out that in Boston Hospitals we could have this operation for 200,000. dollars.We would still have to pay expenses during recovery,transportation etc.Soon this proposal became impossible.
fast forward couple of months Our lions club raised couple of thousand dollars . Barbara's church members gave another two thousand dollars.Air India gave a free ticket to Bombay. A private hospital charged 4000 dollars for the operation and other people took care of her while in India and operation was great success .This woman from Kenya reached back in Kenya after a month and soon after joined her duties at the school. This story i am telling just to share that some times there are out of the box solutions for most serious of the problems.

ANY way i wish AISHA good luck and great health and love .Thanks to Grossman Burn Foundation of Calabasas Californiafor this service and people of goodwill around the world.

No comments:

Post a Comment