Nalini Mohammed nee Shivram, currently suffering from end stage renal disease, is now bedridden and is still pleading for help.
Shivram and her husband of fourteen years, Rasheed Mohammed, in their desperation to get help stood in front of the National Cultural Centre last Thursday with placards which read “Save my wife” and “Jagdeo/CARICOM I will die within days, Can’t afford dialysis”.
The display did not have the desired effect, Shivram told Stabroek News via telephone yesterday. A former dialysis patient, the woman explained, paid for a dialysis treatment last Saturday but that is the only help she has since received.
“I couldn’t afford to pay for any treatment last week…and I sit in my house crying wondering what going to happen to me,” Shivram recalled, “then I get a call from the dialysis centre telling me that somebody wanted to pay for a treatment…I told them that I wanted to do it immediately.”
The distressed couple told Stabroek News last Friday that they were prompted by a businessman to stand peacefully with their placards at the opening ceremony for the 30th Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government. This, they’d explained, seemed like a good way to get the attention of the government or anyone who could help.
Shivram, according to an invoice from the 5G Dialysis Centre, must receive dialysis three times a week. Each treatment, the invoice said, costs just over $36, 000. The woman had been undergoing dialysis for the last two years and the Ministry of Health had paid for 20 treatments. Last week Shivram received one treatment and has gotten none so far this week.
“I hope that people will help me because my life depends on it,” Shivram said. “Just a few more treatments I hope and then hopefully I will get a donor so I can get my transplant.”
Shivram told Stabroek News yesterday that she does not expect dialysis to be provided free of cost. However, the woman stated that it would be of great help if the cost could be subsidized.
“I read in the news today [yesterday’s edition of the Kaieteur News] that the Ministry of Health cannot afford to provide continuous help to people like me and that they cannot give us dialysis free,” Shivram said. “I don’t want them to provide the service free but I would be grateful is I could get two treatments for one…they just need to make the treatment affordable that is all.”
