The first 4 months of the year are over!  Gone so quickly!  At Samman, we have been busy.  Given below is a short update of our activities from Jan-April.

School Awareness Programs:

One of our main goals is to raise epilepsy awareness in order to educate people about first aid for seizures and stop discrimination against people who have epilepsy.  If we educate teachers how to appropriately take care of the child with epilepsy, their attitude of acceptance would transfer to rest of the children in the classroom.  Dr. Pradnya Gadgil & Dr. Jayanti Mani along with Pooja Nandi have been going to various schools to educate teachers.  I thank Kanchan Gupta for calling up the various schools and scheduling these meetings.  A task that requires much persistence. I also thank Ketki for arranging the BMC program in Kalyan.  Education of school teachers was conducted on the following dates.

16th Jan –  Kalyan – Epilepsy education conducted for teachers from various BMC schools. Totally 50 teachers attended this program

30th Jan – Kendriya Vidyalaya Mandir, Malad

2^nd Feb – St. Xaviers, Vie Parle

11^th Feb – Kendriya Vidyalaya Mandir, Powai

11^th March – Rajhans Vidyalaya, Andheri

17^th March – Kendriya Vidyalaya Mandir, Mankhurd

31^st March – St. Anne’s High School, Malad

Additionally we did one awareness program at the Andheri Metro Station on 9^th Feb’16 where we had skits performed throughout the day depicting the need for acceptance of people with epilepsy (see photos below).  Information material was given to the people passing through the station.  We thank Christopher Fernandes who was instrumental in making this happen.

Support Group Meetings

After we had to leave ECell at Nana Chowk, we have had no place to conduct these meetings.  We then started having epilepsy education programs at various hospitals.  The doctors at these hospitals have been very cooperative and have chosen to talk on various topics of interest to people with epilepsy and their caregivers.  We plan to continue with these hospital meetings every 4^th Saturday of the month – generally from 2.30 to 4.30 pm.  Meetings have been conducted at the following places:

23^rd January –  Holy Spirit Hospital, Andheri

27^th February – KEM Hospital, Parel

26^th March – Hiranandani Hospital, Powai

23^rd April – We had the meeting at our new Samman Office (see earlier post).\

Exhibition cum Sale

Our members who make various products like photo frames, jewellery, crochet articles etc. have an opportunity to sell these at exhibition cum sales.  Many of these are specially held for NGOs where tables are given free of charge. It also gives us an opportunity to create epilepsy awareness.  We took part in the following programs:

2^nd – 5^th Feb – At Government Law College, Churchgate

5^th – 6^th March – At Ghatkopar Metro Station

Christopher Fernandes got the permissions and set up the above programs.

Rural Epilepsy Clinic

24^th January –  97 patients came to the clinic. They were attended to by Neurologists: Dr. Pravina Shah, Dr. Joy Desai, General Physician: Dr. Wagle, Physiotherapist: Dr. Dhruv and  Samman volunteers who helped in the smooth operation of the clinic.

17^th April – 93 patients came to the Clinic.  This time there were 3 Neurologists: Dr. Pravina Shah, Dr. Joy Desai & Dr. Jayanti Mani, 2 Physiotherapists: Dr. Dhruv & Shabnam, along with Dr. Wagle who attended to patients. Many thanks to the Samman members who were responsible for the efficient running of the clinic – distributing medicines and files and maintaining order.

We thank Ashokbhai Parekh for the infrastructure and hospitality provided to us and to the patients and we thank Nareshbhai the Caretaker, and the various cooks whose delicious food sustains us well!

Carol D’Souza