Shillong, June 29: The parents of Seema Boro residents of Shantipur village a 05 year old Bodo girl had lost all hope and accepted the fate of their seriously ill daughter after they had tried their best keeping in view their socio economic limitations. They had taken the child around to a private medical institute in Tezpur and Guwahati Medical College. But they had to take the child home due to financial constraints and poor prognosis.
But as they say miracles do happen, when the girl’s parents had lost all hope, they heard of Army’s Red Horn Division’s Field Hospital situated in Hattigor, which renders medical services not just to the Army but also the civil population. This Field Hospital holds a commendable amount of goodwill amongst the locales and is looked up to as the 24×7 medical sentinel of the area. The parents saw a ray of hope and came to the Field Hospital with the little Seema who was in a near coma state, thinking and truly believing that Army is their last resort.
To add to their luck on reaching the Field Hospital, the Boro family encountered the ever enthusiastic and passionate to her profession, young and energetic lady medical officer on duty Capt Nikita Srivastava. After referring to her medical documents and taking a thorough history, it was concluded by Capt Nikita that the girl was suffering from Infectious Encephalitis. It is a condition where the brain tissues get inflamed or swell up in response to an infection. This increases the intra cranial pressure leading to severe symptoms like headache, nausea, vomiting, high grade fever, lethargy, drowsiness, visual disturbances, respiratory disturbances, decreased or loss of consciousness, stiff neck and seizures which may prove life threatening or debilitating if left untreated.
Capt Nikita Srivastav took it as a challenge to get Seema back to normal and after due discussions and permission of her Commanding Officer, she got on with her treatment. She also consulted a known Paediatrician in her home town Bareilly to take his advice and based on various lab tests planned a schedule so that the treatment could be smoothly administered. Every day the unit vehicles would pick her up from her house at 0700 hrs, bring her to the MI Room where me and my NA would initiate the treatment for the day. After completion of the treatment she was dropped back at 1500 hrs. Her treatment continued for about 03 months during which she started showing remarkable signs of improvement.
On 15 Nov 2015, she was finally discharged from the MI Room since she did not require injectable drugs anymore and was complying to oral medications. The patient had fully recovered and had all her medical parameters within normal limits. Seema Boro kept coming to the Field Hospital for regular follow ups till June 2016. Seema, who is six years old now, is leading a normal life. She plays with her friends and is soon about to start going to school.
