You raised me up!
Overcoming the odds Beating disability to becoming a champion
For the poor, getting timely and affordable medical care is an ordeal! When one has to choose between food on the table and paying for medicine, the poor would usually choose a meal, till the illness becomes life-threatening. Unaware of life-threatening complications, they tend to ignore their illness till they wake up to situations that are beyond treatment, often leading to loss of a dear life or ending up with a disability.
When disability knocks on your door …
44-year old Shafiullah’s life was shaken not once but thrice. Hailing from a small village in Devanahalli Taluk in Bangalore Rural District, Shafiullah’s story underlines the struggle and misery the poor face if they fall ill and have to seek medical care.
“While working as a labourer in the field, I had a small cut on my right foot. I didn’t bother much about it and it got infected. I took treatment from the next door clinic. When there was no improvement, and my leg began to turn black, I rushed to a bigger hospital in the last minute. It was too late and the doctor told me that the gangrene had spread and my leg was amputated.
Then I began working with the support of crutches and fell again while trying to balance myself. I had an injury…show more content… What a joy to see people such as Shaifullah who has beaten the odds; Munikrishnamma, (who used a wooden plank to drag herself around the village) now believes in miracles. She now cheerfully moves around on the tricycle she was provided; one-year-old Yashwanth who was bedridden and in a vegetative state has learnt to sit, stand and walk; the blind duo of Krishnappa and his sister Bagyamma, who used hold on to their 80-year old mother’s sari to go to the bushes to attend to toilet, now lives with dignity – a toilet at home. These are few of the lives touched and transformed through our