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Written By: Admin | Updated : April 19, 2013 10:30 AM IST
The mainstream media is often vilified for being sensationalist and TRP-chasers but it seems like we are capable of some good as well. Due to the overwhelming coverage that baby Roona Begum and her little-known condition called hydrocephalus (or water in the brain) received from various media outlets, people moved by her plight have sent in money from across the country and the world for her treatment. Her father Abdul told the Daily Mail, I cannot find work every day. It s hard enough to earn for food, so her treatment would have been impossible had it not been for the press and hospital people who have helped us.
Roona suffers from a rare disease called Hydrocephalus which has led to cerebrospinal fluid build-up inside the skull which has caused her head to swell up to thrice its normal size. She suffers from a severe case of the disease. She is being treated at the Fortis Memorial Research Institute where she will undergo a surgery today to drain the fluid from her brain.
The Fortis Foundation flew Roona and her family from their village in Tripura to Delhi where doctors hope that the exploratory procedure will help relieve the pressure and allow them to examine her properly and then decide further treatment. The doctors insist that she is very lucky and most children with this condition don t survive beyond the age on 1.
Dr Sandeep Vaishya, Director of Neurosurgery at Fortis Memorial Research Institute, who is treating Roona, said: 'I was surprised when I saw the baby for the first time. Even though I had seen her pictures, I wasn't expecting the head to be so big. Her head measures 94 cm, in similar cases the average measurement is around 50-60 cm. 'It is swollen to an extent that she is not able to close her eyes completely. We have an ophthalmologist looking at her eyes, so that there are no complications there. 'We are hopeful that she will make a complete recovery. The challenge is to drain her brain fluid in a gradual manner, so as the brain gets used to it.'
Hydrocephalus is an extremely rare condition that affects only about one in 500 children the world over. The word hydrocephalus is derived from the Greek words; hydro meaning water and cephalus meaning head , literally meaning water on the brain . This condition is characterized by excessive fluid build up in the head of a baby. Although the word refers to water , it is not water that accumulates in the brain, but CSF or cerebro-spinal fluid that accumulates within the ventricles (spaces in the brain) of the brain. This accumulation leads to widening of these spaces leading to unnatural pressure being exerted on the tissue of the brain.
