On October 24th, I had the opportunity to visit one of the projects being sponsored by the Foundation. It is the Abha Seva Sadan Multitherapy clinic. Every Monday they hold a special program for kids affected by cerebral palsy. This area of India where the clinic is located registers a very high occurrence of this disease.

My journey to the clinic started at the Pundag train station located a few miles away. My guide and I were driven there by motorcycle. It is common in this part of India that three people will ride on a motorcycle. The road was narrow and basically had only one lane that was shared by vehicles, bicycles, and pedestrians riding on both directions. At certain points the road would practically disappear and we would be driving in small trails but we reached our destination safely.

Fifteen kids showed up with their parents and were being given accupuncture treatment when I arrived. Dr. Gehrman, a german doctor and director of the clinic took me on a tour around the premisses and I could observe kids as young as 3 years old up to 14 being treated by the staff consisting of one Accupuncturist and several assistants.

The chief accupuncturist briefed me about progress of different children some of them who could not walk before the treatment but later on started walking.

After all the kids got acupuncture treatment they were moved to a shelter filled with toys and therapy balls were the parents were instructed how to stimulate them with a pressure points massage and using the various toys. This part of the program created a deeper connection between the parents and the kids and trained them on what they can do to help their kids overcome or improve from the condition.

The final part of the program was to serve a typical nujtritious indian meal to all of children. Most need help from the parents either because they were very small or because their condition made them unable to care for themselves.

The program ended around 1:30 PM when all patients left.

After lunch the chief accupuncturies and the staff went for gardening. That is another part of the project. They have a very nice herbal garden with local medicianal and nutritional plants which they teach the patients how to use

Best wishes.
R. T.