Restoring lives of persons with spinal cord injury is a key focus for The Ganga Foundation. We believe Quality Rehabilitation must be top priority in India, not just for persons with spinal cord injury, but across disabilities.
Rehabilitation means restoration of a person to as independent and as functionally active a life as possible depending on the nature of injury.
The Ganga Foundation, as of now, does not directly have its own rehabilitation facility. We work in rehabilitation of persons with spinal cord injury across India in the following ways:
1) Guidance & support to avail Quality Rehabilitation
2) Experience sharing and training by Peer Trainers Team
3) Expertise sharing to augment rehabilitation capacity
4) 24 x 7 guidance for living well with spinal cord injury
5) Vocational training & aids
6) Support for livelihood projects
7) Networking persons with spinal cord injury and rehabilitation professionals
8) Sports as community integration program
9) Expanding peer support across the country
10) Establishment of knowledge- and design-based training resourcesThis is an illustrative listing. We do take up offbeat approaches on a case-to-case basis. We constantly review and modify our approach based on changes in the ground realities.
Quality Rehabilitation
Quality Rehabilitation helps a person with spinal cord injury become as independent as is possible, given the constraints imposed by the injury. Quality Rehabilitation is all about high quality Occupational Therapy & Physiotherapy with guidance from Physiatrists (doctors who specialize in rehabilitation. It leads to learning living again, from basics of sitting & standing to sexuality.
- Get over dizziness in standing
- Gain sitting balance
- Sit in comfort
- Stand & walk with walker
- Roll in the bed
- Sit up from lying down
- Turn to the sides
- Get to prone position
- Strengthen upper limbs
- Exercise for abdomen
- Do passive exercises for legs
- Understand sexuality after a spinal cord injury
- Learn to manage the loss of bladder control
- Learn to evacuate stools
- Cope with external temperature
- Wear dress, socks and shoes
- Shift to wheelchair from bed and back
- Transfer to and from cars & autos
- Understand `The Right Wheelchair’
- Learn efficient propulsion
- Learn wheelchair skills
- Understand importance of sports
- Understand importance of nutrition
- Get up from the floor after a fall
- Manage in unfriendly environments
- Learn to take care of essential equipment
- Understand importance of skin care
- Know ways to avoid and / heal bedsores
- Manage any urinary infections
- Learn efficient ways of catheterization
- Monitor body condition
- Understand how to manage spasms
- Become a functionally active person
- Be as completely independent as possible
Let’s Restore
Guiding and supporting persons with spinal cord injury on the brink is the goal of the Let’s Restore Program of The Ganga Foundation.
Let’s Restore has empowered 33 lives. We lost four.
Secondary complications of spinal cord injury – mainly bedsores and bladder-related problems – can very quickly push a person to a state where even life is in danger. These two are most common causes of death among persons with spinal cord injury in India.
Muthu Shanmugam was a classic example. He had not had any rehabilitation. He had multiple bedsores that were deep and infected. When we first met him in 2011, he was completely pale. He was not even aware of skin care or how to take care of bedsores.
He had good support in the family with his mother, herself struggling with one-side paralysis, paying great care to her son. This was the only reason he managed to survive. He made a decent living by lying prone and working from home. Work became the focus of his life.
It took two-plus years of persuasion and coercion to finally get him to Christian Medical College (CMC), Vellore. In four months, he went back in top shape.
Enabling Livelihood
This is the biggest challenge in the rehabilitation of persons with spinal cord injury. More than 90% will not be able to go back and carry on the job / work / business they were doing earlier. This will be due to a variety of factors:
- Limitations imposed on physical independence by the injury
- Eternal search for a `treatment’ to heal what cannot be healed
- Lack of timely access to Quality Rehabilitation
- Constraints due to accessibility
- Transportation costs are not covered by the possible income
- Tendency to live off government and / or family support
In the livelihood space, The Ganga Foundation has focussed on:
1) Education of children with spinal cord injury
2) Small-business support
3) Vocational training
4) Skills training
5) Equipment for trade
6) Enabling job opportunities
7) Higher education
8) Home-based work
9) Guidance from early stage of injury
10) Relevant networking to role models
Though many with spinal cord injury mention the need for a livelihood and income generation, in practice we find only a small proportion of such persons actually willing to go the distance and make a living.
Make plans and approach us for support.
Satish from Pennathur in Tamil Nadu is a wonderful example of what is possible if you go ahead and do. Maker of wheelchair cushions & bed, tailor, goldsmith, grocery supplier and security guard at night – he dons several hats and is at work 24 x 7, and leads a dignified life.
Sports
In India, sports play a major role in reintegrating persons with disability into the community. It is an opportunity to pursue excellence. Sport promotes overall well-being and fitness. Persons with disability who are into sports also lead more active lives. Pursuing a sport not only provides functional rehabilitation but also psychological and social rehabilitation through exposure to competition, travel, social interaction and recognition.
Justin Vijay Jesudas
International Paralympic Swimmer & Rifle Shooter
From an early stage, The Ganga Foundation has focussed on sports as a means of enabling and accelerating community interaction for persons with spinal cord injury; it is also less expensive and not stressful as livelihood exploration.
Our sports focus has centred on:
1) Encouraging participation in regular distances in marathons through our team Running For Ability.
2) Encouraging training and participation of persons with spinal cord injury in state- and national-level para sports.
3) Support for development of players in wheelchair basketball from Tamil Nadu, Odisha and Bihar.
4) Funding sports facilities at Chandigarh Spinal Rehab to ensure sports was part of rehabilitation from its start in July 2016.
5) Support for training equipment for select individuals as well as at the Mary Verghese Foundation in Vellore.
Rehabilitation Centres in India
For persons with spinal cord injury who are looking for Quality, Affordable Rehabilitation, The Ganga Foundation suggests the following places:
Dr Mary Verghese Institute of Rehabilitation
Christian Medical College
Bagayam,Vellore – 632 002
Tamilnadu.
Christian Medical College, Vellore
Ida Scudder Road,Vellore – 632004
Tamilnadu.
Ph:0416 228 1000
Christian Medical College Vellore Hospital – Chittoor Campus
Vellore Road, Valliappa Nagar
Kalagatur
Chittoor – 517002
A.P
Ph:0416 2281973
Chandigarh Spinal Rehab
Plot # 1,Madhya Marg,Sector 28A,
Chandigarh – 160002.
E Mail:nickypkaur@gmail.com
Ph: 0172 4610311
HAMSA Brain & Spine Rehab
18, Besant Road,
Off Avvai Shanmugam Salai,
Near Sivaji Productions,
Royapettah,
Chennai – 600014
Tamilnadu.
Duncan Hospital
Duncan Road, Near Custom Office RXL,
Raxaul – 845305
Bihar.
Ph: 06299447370
E Mail : duncan@eha-health.org
Herbertpur Christian Hospital
(Lehman Hospital) Atten Bagh.
Herbertpur – 248142
Uttarakhand.
Mobile:09645717333
SAHAI Spinal Injuries Rehab Centre
Office Address:
# 122, Krishna Colony,
Trichy Road, Singanallur
Coimbatore – 641005
Tamilnadu.
Mobile:09952428787
Rehab Centre Address:
#67/1, Sathy Main Road
Near KMCH Kovilpalayam Hospital
Sarkar Samakulam
Coimbatore – 641 107
Tamilnadu
Mobile: 09790132507