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Living in a hole...

Quack prescribes inhuman treatment for 5-year-old child

eam Asaduzzaman, Nilphamari
Five-year-old Noimi is kept buried from waist down all day at Badiar More village in Nilphamari as prescribed by a "kabiraj (herbal medicine practitioner)" to cure her of physical disability.
She has been treated this way for the last three and a half years but nothing has changed, said Noimi's father Ratan Rishi, 28, a bicycle mechanic.
At Ratan's home on Wednesday, The Daily Star correspondent saw the child in a small hole and struggling to keep balance holding the earth around.
When Noimi was one-year-old, she got high fever accompanied by seizures. Afterwards, she started salivating all the time. She could neither speak nor stand on her own, said her mother Ranjana Rishi, 22. She can feel from the waist down but cannot walk.
The child was then taken to a local quack doctor. Seeing no improvement, the poor couple took her to kabiraj Sona Mia in Boda upazila of Panchagarh district and gave him Tk 10,000 in advance on condition of curing her completely, Ratan said.
But massaging the girl with some black viscous oil and giving her some tablets as per the suggestion of the kabiraj brought no result.
He then prescribed keeping the child in a narrow hole, except during the night, saying that it would make her back strong and gradually cure her.
Since then her parents have been putting her in the hole every morning after feeding her and they briefly take her out of the hole for lunch and bathing.
She is taken out in the evening.
Noimi may be suffering from cerebral palsy caused by post-delivery complexities, said Dilip Roy, paediatric consultant at a Nilphamari hospital.
Treatment, including regular exercise at a specialised hospital in Dhaka, may improve her condition, he added.
The parents said they could not afford it and so relied on the kabiraj.
Sona Mia told The Daily Star by phone that his treatment was the only way and the best way to cure her of the disability.
Asked about how she would be cured through the unscientific and inhuman procedure, he said it was the natural way of treating her and that it would take a lot of time.
Meanwhile, the girl fell sick several times.
"She often gets fever, cough, or even pneumonia. The kabiraj has recently stopped communicating with us," the father said.
"We don't have any other option because of financial constraints and so we have continued this treatment in the hope that she will be able to stand one day."