Anushka

For Sumathi already worn down by the ill-health of her husband, Perumal, news that her second daughter Anushka had a congenital heart defect came as a shock. When Anushka was sick three months ago, Sumathi had taken her to a doctor who asked the mother to get the eight-year-old girl screened for heart disease. Until then, the family had not suspected anything though Anushka did suffer from occasional breathlessness and looked frail for her age.

Doctors told Sumathi that Anushka required an open-heart surgery to rectify the ventricular septal defect in her heart. Sumathi was already struggling to make ends meet with her husband unable to work following a renal failure in 2015. Perumal requires dialysis twice every week, something essential for his survival. Fortunately, the impoverished family of five from Villupuram district in Tamil Nadu could access the state’s health insurance scheme for poor families to provide the treatment for Perumal. But the treatment expenses for the father meant that the scheme could not be used for Anushka too.

With the surgery Anushka can look forward to a healthy life and perhaps even chase her mother’s dream that she becomes a doctor and treats people with renal failure like her father. The cardiology unit of a private hospital in Chennai, which runs a CSR programme to provide treatment for poor families, got in touch with Hope Unlimited seeking help for Anushka. Hope Unlimited shared the surgery costs with another foundation. 

Just this Monday, January 28, 2019, Anushka was operated on successfully. Apart from a periodic check-up, Anushka requires no further medical intervention, her doctor says. Her father and two sisters, who could not come to Chennai for her surgery as they did not have the money to travel, are waiting for Anushka to come back home.

(January 2019)