DUBAI A Dubai father is desperately seeking to raise Dh650,000 he needs to pay for the medical costs of his daughter born three months premature.
Sri Lankan Sameera Gallage, 30, who earns Dh5,025 per month as an aircraft towing operator in Dubai, says his daughter’s neo-natal intensive care unit (NICU) costs alone for an estimated 84 days run up to Dh450,000. “I have no idea how I will arrange all the money but I have to pay the hospital at any cost to bring our angel back,” says the worried man whose daughter baby Risandi was born - at 26 weeks - on February 18, three months ahead of the expected delivery date of May 22. In order to continue his daughter’s treatment and care, Gallage says he has so far managed to make an initial deposit of Dh25,000 at the hospital by taking a loan.
High fever
“We had plans to go to Sri Lanka around the time of her delivery and everything was going smoothly till my wife suddenly developed high fever on February 7 and had to be rushed to a hospital as a result,” recalls Gallage.
“Doctors failed to diagnose her illness instantly and within three days her condition worsened so much that she, all of 25 weeks pregnant then, had to be transferred to an ICU of another hospital apparently equipped to handle her condition. Later it emerged she had a bout of influenza AH1N1pneumonia”, says the man from Colombo. “As a result of her critical condition, doctors after nine days of treatment decided to deliver the baby by immediate caesarian section in order to save both lives.”
Weighing just 920g at the time of her birth, baby Risandi’s latest medical report says she is still in incubator care and has occasional tachypnea (rapid breathing) and edema (abnormal accumulation of fluid beneath the skin) besides developing signs of septic.
