In a heart-warming development, a 47-year-old single mother suffering from breast cancer is now undergoing treatment after enlisting help from Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who she had reached out to on the insistence of her 12-year-old son.
According to a report in Mumbai Mirror, the woman, Sanjeevani Mukadam, did not have the means to afford treatment and sustain a livelihood simultaneously. Seeing her condition, her son tracked down Fadnavis’ contact details online and urged her to reach out to him for help.
Upon hearing her story, the report adds, the Chief Minister was so moved, that he promptly asked the officer on special duty (OSD), who looks after the Chief Minister’s Relief Fund, to take out Rs 1.5 lakh for Mukadam’s treatment.
He also ensured that her first chemotherapy session was conducted in a private hospital in Navi Mumbai.
In the message she had sent Fadnavis, Mukadam had reportedly said:
Please provide facilities for women suffering from breast cancer. I will die due to breast cancer as I can’t afford the treatment. I am helpless, a single mother, dying because I can’t afford the treatment. I can’t go to Mumbai. Now the option left for me and my son is to consume poison and die.Sanjeevani Mukadam to CM Fadnavis, as reported byMumbai Mirror
Fadnavis instantly replied with: “Ok. I will help you.”
According to the report, Mukadam had first been diagnosed with breast cancer back in 2007. When she visited a doctor in a civil hospital, he asked her to consult a specialist and prescribed her medicines, both of which turned out to be expensive for the single mother.
Worried about her son’s well-being if anything happened to her, she finally visited Sion Hospital, Mumbai, in March, where she was told that the treatment to counter the disease would cost over Rs 1 lakh, at the minimum.
After many months of struggle, Mukadam is now receiving the treatment she needs, which according to Dr Prince Surana, CEO of the MPCT Hospital, Navi Mumbai, will continue for eight months and will require eight cycles of chemotherapy, surgery and radiation.
“My mother tried to seek help from all our close relatives but no one helped her. But the CM Sir helped her. CM Sir must be getting thousands of messages but he read our request. We never thought he will personally reply to us and help us so soon,” her twelve-year-old son told the newspaper.
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