Little Methnadi is well thanks to the generosity of ST readers
The look of despair is gone and the father who walks into the Sunday Times offices is all smiles.
“My baby is well,” says V.D.A. Namal Nishantha from Bulathgama, Balangoda, showing off all the photographs of Methnadi Uthkarsha who is now just over two years old. Proudly, he plays the songs recorded on his mobile of her singing ‘Kiri sudu hawa, pena pena ava’.
Nishantha and Kumari with Methnadi
Six months after her birth though, things did not look too good. Methnadi was not gaining weight and her beautiful eyes were tinged with yellow. She was diagnosed with biliary atresia, a killer disease, where the flow of bile from the liver to the small intestine is blocked due to the tubes or ducts carrying the bile not being developed.
As bile has the salts that help in the digestion of food in the small intestine, this condition results in liver damage, followed by cirrhosis (scarring) of this vital organ of the digestive system. The long-term answer is a liver transplant and it is to raise funds to take the little one to India that Nishantha sought help from the Sunday Times.
And the readers of the Sunday Times chipped in soon after the story of Methnadi was published, headlined ‘Just six months old & the battle begins against biliary atresia’ on June 23, 2013.
While thanking them profusely, Nishantha also expresses gratitude to a lawyer-relative of his wife, Kumari, the company he himself works for, numerous others and the President’s Fund for helping to save Methnadi’s life.
More than six months, he, Kumari, Methnadi, his wife’s sister and his mother-in-law were in India to get the liver transplant done. It was his sister-in-law who donated part of her liver to Methnadi.
“Than hodin innawa,” says Nishantha, adding that Methnadi is well now. When he sees his beloved daughter, he remembers all those who helped them to save her life, he says with much emotion.