She traveled from one country to another alone for treatment of her three-month old daughter, a thalassemic patient, a decision for which her husband and in-laws abandoned her.
Mamata Yasmin, a housewife and resident of Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka visited Kolkata alone with her daughter Aamira (name changed) when doctors recommended her a “better treatment” across the border. Aamira was only three-month old when she was detected to be thalassemic.
“Doctors told us that she can be treated but we should not be impatient…My husband and in-laws told me that there was no point in watering a dead plant and I must not press them for treating Aamira,” the 30-year-old mother told PTI.
Determined to cure her daughter, Mamata returned to her father’s house who promised to help her financially. “My father sold his land and other belongings and gave me a few lakh rupees for Aamira’s treatment and I arrived here in India in 2012,” Mamata said.
Alone in the city with nobody to help her, Mamata rented a room at Rajarhat and started taking Aamira, now a four-year-old, to a renowned medical facility where expenses hit the roof.
“Blood transfusions and iron chelations were becoming quite painful when I heard about the bone marrow treatment which can treat thalassemia completely. But that was expensive… Then I decided to give it a try at Apollo Gleneagles Hospital. The doctors at the hospital decided to undertake bone marrow transplant, the only known cure for thalassemia, to address the situation”, Yasmin said.
“Aamira’s eight-year-old elder brother was identified as a perfect HLA match and was prepared for the transplant,” Haemato-Oncologist and specialist in bone marrow transplantation Dr Shilpa Bhartia said.
(Feature Image Source: Reuters)