Doctor couple’s healing touch to special children

A doctor helps. The help quadruples if two doctors have a social inclination and an eye of compassion for those unable to voice their concerns.
Neurologist-ophthalmologist couple of Nilesh and Sarita Bhandari have taken it upon themselves to address the health problems related to eyes, neuro and physio, and psycho issues of special children. Sarita has completed the eye check-up of such kids through camps at Kamayani School. Nilesh will be beginning his neuro sessions for over 200 such children. Physiotherapy and psychotherapy sessions will follow.

Sarita conducted a couple of counselling sessions for the parents of special students to tell them what modern medicine had on offer for them. "Sometimes, we do not consider the pain the parents or the caregivers of special children go through. To alleviate some of their stress, these counselling sessions were organised," Sarita said, adding that after a while, parents also give up and think improvement of their children was not possible. She said modern medicine had much to offer to improve the overall health of special children. The range of improvement, however, depends on the existing intelligence quotient of these kids.

Nilesh and Sarita are scouting for donors and getting help from medical representatives to give care to these children. "A donor wanted to do something for special children but did not know how to go about it. When we tapped him, he sponsored the glasses of 25 students of the school," Sarita said.

Almost 25 of the 27 kids, who needed spectacles, did not have one despite having high powers (9/10/11) because they could not communicate their needs clearly. The glasses by themselves were quite difficult to make because each student had a different face size (sometimes imbalanced).

"So, we had to customize them.

Otherwise, they would not wear spectacles regularly," she said.

The doctor couple has, for now, decided to conduct annual check-up and medicine distribution camps at Kamayani School and monitor the health of the children closely. The check-up and medication, if required, will be fully free of cost.

Sarita said if more doctors joined in, they could extend the camp to other schools as well.

Narayan Shinde, a teacher of Kamayani School, said, "Doctors have come here in the past too. But this was the most holistic check-up camp. It will help if all doctors join hands and come forward to help these kids."

He said with sustained efforts, there can be a small or big improvement in the lives of these kids. "The society must determine if they are ready to absorb them and treat them equally. These kids, when given direction, are a lot more focussed and sincere compared to other regular workers," he added.

Sarita has set herself small targets. "If we can bring down the number of times these kids fall ill in a year to three from six, their condition will be a lot better," she said.