Who’ll take me home?Lack of even basic medicines and vaccines at orphanages is severely compromising the chances of already disadvantaged kids at adoptionSaira Kurup | TNN
Three-month-old Raj has already been hospitalised thrice for pneumonia. Two-year-old Lakshmi, too, is yet to recover from repeated pneumonia attacks. Her breathing remains laboured. But both might have been dead had they not got the care they now receive at Palna, a home for abandoned children in north Delhi.
Raj and Lakshmi are lucky. They are among the few abandoned and orphaned children who find love and care in children’s homes. “Most are severely medically compromised by the time we get them,” says Tarini Bahadur, a member of the executive committee of the Delhi Council for Child Welfare, the organisation that runs Palna. “There are pre-term babies with very low weight, even as low as 1.8 kg. Many come with disabilities, pneumonia and diarrhoea.”
Dr Veronica Shah, a paediatrician associated with Palna, adds: “We get our kids off the street, from dustbins and parks. Some have deep gashes in the head; one came with pulmonary TB. They have septicaemia, abscesses, blood infections.”
As their lives start with abuse and neglect, these kids are susceptible to diseases which delay their growth and development, despite the best possible care. Pneumonia is a big worry, and so is diarrhoea.
Palna, which has 100 children in the 0-8 age group, has a semi-hospital setup, too. Yet, there were five to six cases of pneumonia every month on an average in Palna last year. Wendy Andrews, executive officer at Delhi’s Hope Foundation adoption home Ashran, says that Pneumonia is definitely a problem and bronchitis is common. “Luckily, we have a nurse and a tie-up with a hospital nearby. We had to hospitalise a baby for pneumonia. The costs are very high.”
The good news is that there’s a long waiting list for adoption of these children, with a majority of Indian couples preferring babies over older ones. Lorraine Campus, the adoption officer at Palna, says, “The wait could be three to four years. But people are willing to wait.”
The downside, Shah says, is that chances of an ill child being adopted decrease with each hospital visit, as a poor and long medical history is a negative point for adoptive parents. “We don’t present the child to couples till she is fully healthy,” says Bahadur. “It also takes time to detect disabilities. As a matter of policy, we place 80% of the children in India.”
Campus is happy that so far she has been able to place almost all the children in good homes. “Western families are more accepting of children who aren’t healthy,” she says.
Tight funds are another problem. Even getting vaccines are tough. “At Ashran, we live a hand-to-mouth existence but we ensure that the children are not denied anything,” says Andrews. Palna got a donation of Rs 1.5 lakh for the chicken pox vaccine and managed to get all its children immunised. The pneumonia vaccine is expensive and difficult to arrange at Rs 3,200 per child. But there’s a cheaper variant by Glaxo at Rs 1,400-1,500. Four shots are required, making it a minimum Rs 6,000 per child.
Is it surprising then that India has the highest number of child deaths due to pneumonia? A recent report released by the International Access Vaccine Centre and John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health shows that 3.71 lakh Indian children died of pneumonia in 2008. For children from poor families that don’t have easy access to doctors and drugs, the disease often proves fatal. And even for those that survive, it’s an uphill battle. Adoption homes often have to counsel parents not to expect the same development milestones from these children as from healthy kids who live with their birth parents.
“We inoculate the children against everything but have never been able to raise the funds we need,” says Bahadur. “We charge just Rs 40,000 from Indian families as adoption fee. But in the first few weeks after receiving a baby, we spend Rs 20,000 on advertising in newspapers with details about the child as per the rule. In Maharashtra, this amount has been waived, so we have requested the Central Adoption Resource Authority to waive it in Delhi, too.”
Private donations help but aren’t a steady source of funds. Raju George of New Life Mercy Home, an orphanage in north Delhi, says, “The JK Group provided medical insurance for children here last year. But this year, there have been no offers.”
The government’s recent decision to introduce the pentavalent vaccine – against diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, hepatitis B and Hib (which causes pneumonia and meningitis) -- in the universal immunisation programme has been controversial, but the move has implications for the poor who can’t afford it. “It is critical for big business and the government to work together and come up with a solution to the vaccine pricing obstacle,” says Shah. “For children on the fringes of society, access to vaccines goes beyond the immediate need of surviving the disease.”
saira.kurup@timesgroup.com
TOI DEC 28 2011 Girl’s mother arrested for ‘honour killing’Mahalingam Ponnusamy TNN Chennai: The Gummidipoondi ‘honour killing’ case has taken a new twist with the Tiruvallur police on Monday arresting the 16-year-old girl’s mother for her murder. The girl’s uncle has already been arrested in the case.
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K Thilagavathi, a Class 11 student of agovernment school, was found dead in her house in Sethilpakkam village near Gummidipoondi on Wednesday last.Initially, it was thought she had committed suicide. But when the postmortem report revealed that the girl’s hyoid bone was fractured, unusual in a case of hanging, police suspected murder. On Saturday, police arrested the girl’s uncle K Hari (37).
Police said Hari confessed to killing Thilagavathi on the request of Padmavathy. “Ten days ago, Padmavathy told him about a video clip showing Thilagavathi getting intimate with some senior boys of her school doing the rounds. Hari promised to kill the girl to protect the family honour,” Gummidipoondi deputy superintendent of police K Kumar told TOI. Kin tried to pass off girl’s death as suicide
The Tiruvallur police on Monday arrested the mother of the 16-year-old girl who was a victim of honour killing. The girl’s uncle has already been arrested in the case. DSP K Kumar said Hari, the uncle, strangled Thilagavathi and made a knot around her neck using her dress to make it appear like a case of hanging. “Padmavathy purposely left Thilagavathi alone at home before Hari entered and killed her,” Kumar said.
A day after the girl was found dead, her family members and relatives, including Hari and Padmavathy, staged a road roko and refused to accept the body. After Hari’s arrest, the girl’s father had told TOI that he killed her because of a previous enmity. “Initially, all family members said it was suicide, then they said it was murder. Now, the truth is out,” the DSP said. Padmavathy was booked under Section 302 (murder) of the IPC and sent to the women’s prison at Puzhal. |
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