One-year-old boy with rare ‘Kawasaki’ disease cured free of cost at Karur govt hospital

Kawasaki disease leads to an aneurysm (a bulge in the wall) of the coronary arteries, which supply blood to the heart, resulting in a heart attack
Doctors and dean Dr Theranirajan who cured Harish of ‘Kawasaki’ disease in Karur GMCH on Tuesday (Photo | Express)
Doctors and dean Dr Theranirajan who cured Harish of ‘Kawasaki’ disease in Karur GMCH on Tuesday (Photo | Express)

KARUR: Doctors at the Karur Government Medical College Hospital (GMCH) have cured a one-year-old boy affected by the rare Kawasaki disease at zero cost.

Kawasaki disease is a syndrome that causes inflammation in the blood vessels throughout the body. The condition is most often diagnosed in children who are under the age of five. The symptoms generally start with fever that lasts for five days. The other symptoms include red eyes, strawberry tongue, dry and cracked lips, swollen hands and legs, peeling of skin etc.

It leads to an aneurysm (a bulge in the wall) of the coronary arteries, which supply blood to the heart, resulting in a heart attack. The disease was named after Tomisaku Kawasaki, a Japanese paediatrician who first discovered it in 1967.

The boy Harish is the son of Palanisamy, 30, of Gandhi Nagar in Thanthonimalai, who works as a daily wage labourer, and Kala. He was admitted to the Karur GMCH on June 3 after being affected with high fever. Apart from that, he was also suffering from all the other symptoms of Kawasaki disease.

Speaking to The New Indian Express, Dean Dr Theranirajan said, “The boy who was first admitted for fever, was later diagnosed with other symptoms for ‘Kawasaki’ which is a very rare disease. We took blood samples and ECHO test for the boy to confirm the disease. While a normal person has 1.5 to 4 lakh platelets in their blood, Harish had about 8 lakh platelets in his blood due to Kawasaki. Fortunately, the boy tested negative for COVID-19.”

“Luckily, we have medicines to cure this rare disease. Injecting IV IG dosage for 16 hours in an infected body will cure the disease. As it’s a rare phenomenon, the medicine cost a fortune. So, under CM’s special Mediclaim scheme, all the treatment and medicine were provided at free of cost for the boy. Now the boy is completely cured and ready to go home. The boy will be tested again at specific intervals after the discharge to check for aneurysm in future. With the boy weighing 11 kg, 22 grams of IV IG dosage worth Rs 60,000 was injected. The same medicine and cost of treatment for this treatment will cost several lakhs in private hospitals. But our GMCH has done it free of cost and successfully cured the boy,” he concluded.

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