Uhuru pays Ksh.3.5M medical bill for Ethan Macharia after emotional letter

Uhuru pays Ksh.3.5M medical bill for Ethan Macharia after emotional letter

Ethan Macharia, the five year-old boy who penned an emotional letter to President Uhuru Kenyatta asking for financial support to undergo medical treatment in India, has finally received the much-needed help.

The boy and his mother had asked President Kenyatta and other well wishers to help them raise Ksh.3.5 million required for him to undergo a Vagus Nerve Simulator surgery at the Forties Hospital India on Tuesday March 3, 2020.

Kenya’s Ambassador to India Willy Bett on Friday revealed that President Kenyatta has footed the boy’s full bill, which will now see him undergo the surgery.

“No words can explain my emotions right now and no words can express my gratitude to the President for his kind gesture. The last 16 months have been nothing but emotional turmoil for us and we are glad that with this surgery, Ethan will be able to lead a normal life like he was before and become who he wants to be,’’ said Ethan’s mother Veronica Njeri.

Ethan is said to have fallen in November 2018 from a flight of stairs while playing, sustaining serious head injuries.

He would soon later develop violent seizures that further worsened his situation resulting in grave bodily harm.

His life was completely altered and he has never been able to resume school owing to the frequent number of violent seizures he gets in a day. He had also lost most of his cognitive abilities.

“My son was leading a normal life until the unfortunate incident that changed our lives forever. We have spent the last 14 months trying to raise money for what doctors call a Palliative VNS surgery that’s supposed to suppress his daily seizures as a result of the fall.

“This is the second time we are here in the last 14 months and we couldn’t raise enough money the first time,” his mother Veronica Njeri explained.

According to doctors in India, the VNS surgery is extremely important for Ethan as the seizures are unable to be controlled even with multiple drugs.

This is reportedly an option in only a subgroup of pharmacoresistant epileptic patients, where an epileptogenic focus is localized and amenable to surgical intervention.

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