Story of Jagrani, 60-year-old widow

Story of Jagrani, 60-year-old widow who lives in Biharipur village of Block Parsandi in Sitapur. Suffering from Lymphatic filariasis since 16 years. There are 12 people in her family, 4 unmarried daughters, 2 sons and their wives and children. Her sons do farming which just provides them with basic food for their survival. Their family conditions are very poor.

During the early stage of the disease it started with constant high fever and weakness and pain in the leg and I neglected the symptoms like any usual viral and pain but gradually the cycle of falling sick increased and started to happen quite often. I used to just take normal viral medicines from the local doctor (the untrained doctors in the village) he kept giving me medicines for fever and never realised that the leg pain was due to some other reason.

She was unaware about the consequences of the of disease how it spreads and how severe it can get. Since she was unaware of keeping precautions at home so that it does not spread to other family members at home. LF is a disease a communicable disease, it can spread through mosquito bites and can spread very easily if not taken proper precautions. Most important precaution is sleeping in the mosquito net so that mosquito does not bite the patient. This is the most common and easiest process of transmission. Being unaware of the LF disease she never took any precautions and this has spread to her daughter Drugesh Kumari, 29 year old women who is currently in the very early stage of LF, she has started to feel the pain in the veins and abdomen. During the first stage there occurs swelling in the abdomen area and slowly it goes down in the leg and feet portion. I have luckily gotten aware of the disease and I have started taking the right medicines fortunately by the support of GLRA team I have been given the right prescription and it is under treatment.