CHENNAI: Remember how a two-year-old in Chennai procured medicine for Epilepsy from Bengaluru with the help of social media, a week ago? On Friday, a man in Chennai volunteered to give two strips of the same medicine, Sabril Vigabatrin, to a family in Bengaluru, which was in desperate need of the medicine.
Not just that, but the same medicine was given to few other families in need over the last two days, through volunteership.
Disability rights activist, Vaishnavi Jayakumar was one of the key people who facilitated procurement and distribution of the medicines. After she came across the two-year-old child incident, she looked up for similar requests for the same medicine on social media and created a list of people who need these medicines.
Sabril Vigabatrin is only an imported medicine and no firm in India has the legal right to distribute it within the country.
"I got in touch with the former chief commissioner of excise department, Pandu Ranga Rao to get the import data of these medicines, so that we could get in touch with the pharmacy. He immediately got in touch with his colleague and apart from the logistics, he also arranged for two strips of the tablet," said Vaishnavi.
P Arjun from Chennai who was in desperate need of these tablets for his 18-month-old child immediately picked up the tablets on Thursday. He was also promised two more strips. But, when he got a call to pick up two more strips on Friday, he decided to give the tablets to other families in need.
"I had enough tablets for 10 days and I was connected with other families in need of these tablets in a WhatsApp group Vaishnavi created. There was one Mahendra Singh in Bengaluru who had only two tablets. So, we wanted to give it to his child," said Arjun.
Incidentally, Mahendra Singh put up the request for the tablets on Twitter after reading an article by Express.
But, for the medicines to reach Bengaluru, somebody had to pick it up from the Customs office and post them to Bangalore. That was when Tamil Nadu Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities, Johny Tom Varghese chipped in and volunteered to pick up and post the medicines himself. "The post office people too were very kind and the postal service officer, Akhil ensured the medicines reached Bangalore by Saturday," Johny said.
Mahendra, whose three-year-old child was barely taking the medicines by then due to shortage, burst into tears when he finally received the medicines. "Living in scare that your child might suffer a seizure and you cannot do anything about it is a nightmare. I'm at lost of words and it's great to see even top officials taking this issue personally and volunteering to help," Mahendra said.
Meanwhile, senior IPS officer Arun Bothra who helped the two-year-old in Chennai procure medicines arranged three more strips of Sabril. They were shipped to Hyderabad and Chennai.
"What is remarkable is that individually government officials are going out of their way to do incredible things. We are in talks with a few firms and government officials to ensure the provision of the medicine, Sabril Vigabatrin, in bulk," said Vaishnavi.