The first rural epilepsy camp conducted by the IEA and assisted by patient members of Samman was held on 18^th November 2007 at Pen in Raigad district. Every 6-8 weeks since then a comprehensive epilepsy care team consisting of a Neurologist, General Physician, Psychologist, Special Educator and volunteers from Samman the epilepsy support group have been conducting camps at the same venue, along with homoeopath doctors. Medicines are distributed free of charge at the camp as patients attending these camps are very poor. At the very first camp it was observed that many patients had visited doctors but for various reasons, their medical compliance was poor.

Details of patient attendance are as follows:

18^th November 2007; No of patients: 25

16^th December 2007; No. of new patients 21; follow up cases: 14

24^th February 2008; No. of new patients 16; follow up cases: 23

30^th March 2008; No. of new patients 3; follow up cases: 23

25^th May 2008; No. of follow up cases: 22

20^th July 2008; No. of new patients 4; follow up cases: 23

31^st August 2008; No. of new patients 9; follow up cases: 28

12th October 2008; No. of new patients: 10 ; follow up cases: 27

30th November 2008: No. of new patients: 4; follow up cases: 30

18th January 2009: No. of new patients: 8 (2 cases  diagnosis needs confirmation with further investigation); follow up cases:30

The above data only refers to epilepsy / febrile seizure patients. Often there have been upto 10 non epilepsy cases coming for diagnosis.

Those who do not come for follow up are mostly those identified with febrile seizures and those who were on medication before the start of the camp and were doing well. For some travel is difficult hence regular follow up is not undertaken.

However amongst those coming regularly great progress has been made in terms of compliance and seizure control.

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