Aatika is 7 years old and has cerebral palsy. Aatika’s father is a survivor of the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster. Her mother Safiya and father Wasim were concerned that the extreme muscle weakness in her limbs would prevent her learning to sit, stand or walk unaided. They first brought her to Chingari for assessment in November 2019. Aatika started physiotherapy and speech therapy, and despite her treatment being interrupted by the pandemic, has made remarkable progress.
In physiotherapy, Aatika’s muscle strength has improved and she can now sit, stand, and walk independently. With the help of the occupational therapist, she has learned to eat and drink with her hands, brush her teeth with help from her parents, and pick out her own clothes. In her classes she has learned to hold a pencil, and she can participate in drawing and other activities and play with the other children. Aatika was unable to speak or produce controlled sounds, but through speech therapy she is learning to control her tongue movement. She can now form individual words but still struggles to pronounce them clearly. The therapists believe this will continue to improve and she will be able communicate well in the future.
Her mother Safiya tells us: “she likes playing with other children but gets upset and feels insulted if someone behaves rudely with her. She never feels bad about her disability […] Although nobody understands what she says, but she keeps on talking. After her birth, we as a family has become more matured and our patience has also increased. Our lives have improved a lot after her birth. We want her to become confident and self-dependent in the future.”
