CIL sanctioned the money for Zolgensma injection for 2-year-old Srishti, daughter of an overman at SECL, for treatment of spinal muscular atrophy.
2-year-old Srishti, daughter of Satish Kr. Ravi, overman, Dipka, SECL, who is suffering from Spinal Muscular Atrophy (Image Source: CIL)
Coal India on November 20 said it will sanction Rs 16 crore towards Zolgensma injection for the treatment of an employee’s infant daughter, who is suffering from Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA).
The company has “sanctioned Rs 16 crore for Zolgensma injection, the only treatment for Srishti, the two-year-old suffering from Spinal Muscular Atrophy”, the coal major said in a post on the public sector miner’s official Twitter handle.
CIL “believes its employees and families are its real wealth” and that Srishti is the daughter of Satish Kumar Ravi, an overman at Dipka (Chhatisgarh), SECL.
“It was not possible for an employee like Satish to buy such an expensive injection, which has to be imported. So, the Coal India management has decided to bear the cost. CIL has set an example for other PSUs and organisations,” a senior SECL official told the Times of India.
Chairman and Managin Directopr of Coal India, Pramod Agrawal, a 1991-batch IAS officer, has initiated the process to sanction the funds, officials told the paper.
SMA is a rare genetic disorder in which a person can’t control muscle movement due to loss of nerve cells in the spinal cord and brainstem. Srishti was born on November 22, 2019 and fell sick within six months, but her parents could not seek better health facilities due to the pandemic and relied on local treatment, the TOI said.
They took her to the Christian Medical College (CMC) Vellore in December 2020, where she was diagnosed with SMA. She was then admitted to an SECL-empanelled hospital in Bilaspur and later to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi, and is now on ventilator at home.
SECL or South Eastern Coalfields is a ‘Miniratna’ and one of the eight fully owned subsidiaries of Coal India.