Once upon a time this 7-year-old girl had a pretty face

SRI LANKA: Little Kaveesha was just seven years studying at Fergusson Balika Vidyalaya, Ratnapura when an unfortunate incident ruined her life.

Her father, a motor mechanic, was repairing a vehicle in the garage adjacent to his house.

Kaveesha, loved by everyone, was in the habit of wearing her mother’s sarees and walking in the garden with an umbrella in one hand a pile of books on the other imitating her school teacher she loved very much.

On this fateful day she was in her father’s workplace, clad in a saree, when a can of petrol caught fire. Her father was inside the house. The next moment she was engulfed by flames.

Her mother who rushed to the scene, screaming, managed to save her life but she suffered severe injuries.

Kaveesha was rushed to the Ratnapura hospital and transferred to the ICU of the Lady Ridgeway hospital due to the intensity of the burns.

She was discharged after nearly three months.

Since then her parents have been taking her from Ratnapura to Colombo for treatment.

They can no longer afford to do so because they have exhausted all their funds. They seek public assistance.

The doctors have advised her parents to take her to the Apollo hospital in Chennai for further treatment and the hospital informed her parents, Malkanthi and Quintus Jayaratne, that the first operation would cost them around Rs. 3.5 million. They pawned their jewellery and mortgaged the properties but they have not yet been able to raise the required funds.

From her hospital bed, though she was suffering from endless pain, the courageous girl wrote a letter to President Mahinda Rajapaksa asking for assistance and she was given Rs. 500,000 from the President’s fund.

She was admitted to the Apollo hospital for the first surgery and she had to undergo three surgeries lasting three hours each.

Yet they could only attend to her face and by that time her parents had already spent Rs. 2.1 million. The doctors have recommended a cream to be used on her, and each tube costs Rs. 67,950 and she has to use six of them a month.
She would have to undergo another operation to remove her burnt skin and it would cost her family a further Rs. 2.1 million. The family needs another Rs. 3.5 million to take care of her medical expenses.

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