<i>Helping forget trauma of stroke</i>

Clockwise: A physiotherapist taking care of a child patient at CRP Mirpur. A specially built wheelchair by CRP is being used for a physically challenged child and stroke patients being treated at a ward at the centre.Photo: STAR

Treatment of stroke patients is witnessing rapid improvement with the opening of a specialised therapy centre at Mirpur by the Centre for the Rehabilitation of the Paralysed (CRP), a non-profit organisation.
CRP's vision is to rehabilitate the stroke patients in a way that they can contribute to the society instead of being burdens.
“By opening CRP Mirpur we have taken an attempt to offer new and improved treatment for stroke patients. This is the lone institution in the city where stroke patients are being rehabilitated,” said Dr Muzharul Mannan, head of medical & consultant neurologist, CRP.
Opened over a year ago with the help of Kadoorie Charitable Foundation, Hong Kong, CRP Mirpur is working to provide all the services to its patients that are available at CRP, Savar. The centre has become very useful for patients living in the city who need physiotherapy every day.
“It's great for me to have CRP right here in the city. It is not possible for me to travel for two hours (up and down) to take therapy at Savar,” said a government high official who needs daily therapy for back pain.
“The two hours' car journey would increase my back pain,” he added.
Stroke patients taking treatment at the hospital told this correspondent about their improvement after they received physiotherapy at CRP.
“At first I was taken to a city clinic where we had to call physiotherapists on our own to take therapy. It was not satisfactory at all. There was no improvement,” said Md Abdur Rob, a septuagenarian stroke patient.
“Then I came to CRP. The therapy is way too different from what I received before. I'm much better from what I had been a month ago,” he said.
Other patients at CRP Mirpur have similar experience.
Md Saifur Rahman, a stroke patient from Rajshahi, said that in the last few weeks he has improved a lot. “I never thought that I would ever be able to roll onto my side, but now I can move my both hands. Yesterday I even sat on my bed!” said an excited Saifur.
According to doctors, the rate of recovery among stroke patients becomes higher when they get proper treatment at the right time. But most patients receive treatment after wasting time and often get wrong treatment.
“In most cases patients come to us after seeing many doctors and wasting lots of time. In the meantime the patient's condition deteriorates and it becomes difficult to revive him. The recovery rate among these patients is around 45 percent. But if a patient comes directly to us, the recovery rate is 70 to 80 percent,” said Dr Mannan.
"A good number of patients come from NITOR,” he added. NITOR is the National Institute of Traumatology and Rehabilitation popularly known as Pongu Hospital at Sher-e-Bangla Nagar in the city.
Another vision of CRP is to ensure the inclusion of disabled people in the mainstream society. Its mission is to promote an environment where all disabled people can have equal access to health, rehabilitation, education, employment, physical environment and information.
“With this mission and vision we want to bring paralysed stroke patients back to the society,” said Dr Mannan.
“When we are faced with a stroke patient in the family we hardly know where to go and what to do. Most of the time stroke patients are left at home attended by the family members, mostly women. If they get proper therapy, their lives can be revived and they can contribute to the society,” he said.
“While looking after the stroke patients the women also remain confined to the house and fail to contribute to the society. If we can ensure the patients' proper rehabilitation, then none will be needed to look after them.”
“Proper treatment of such patients is needed to bring back women to social life. It will reduce the burden of the family and the burden of the society.”
However, many city dwellers are yet to know about CRP Mirpur.
“At Savar we still get patients from Dhaka who do not know that CRP's services are now available at Mirpur. It happened because we could not advertise our city centre due to fund crisis,” said Dr Mannan.
At present, CRP Mirpur has 45 beds and is giving treatment to around 40 to 70 outpatients on average every day.
“But we want more patients to come here. We will increase our manpower depending on the load of the patients,” he said.
At Mirpur centre CRP is providing paid service. One of the aims of this centre is to attain self-sustainability and assist CRP Savar financially.
“CRP is a non-profit organisation and it depends on the donors' funds. For a long time we were feeling that the donor money is not enough for us and we need to be self-sufficient,” said Dr Mannan.
“Now we are in a state that we need more money to maintain our current services. So we have planned to provide paid services to those who can afford and make a fund out of it so that we can support ourselves and serve the poor patients at Savar,” he added.
Besides rehabilitation of stroke patients, CRP Mirpur is also providing domiciliary or home services for patients who need physiotherapy every day. The home service is very useful for elderly patients for whom it is not possible to come to the therapy centre every day.
For the children who need physiotherapy there is an arrangement for their mothers to stay with them. Attendants of other patients also can stay.
CRP Mirpur is providing excellent operation theatre service for visiting neurosurgeons and orthopaedic surgeons, the doctors said.