“Sometimes I wake up in the night with an itch. I cannot scratch myself and hesitate to rouse my mother from her sleep. So I bear it,” said wheelchair-bound Preethi. She had come from Tiruvannamalai to participate in a rally organised in the city on Saturday.
She was one of a handful of wheelchair-bound persons at a rally held near Elliot’s Beach. Although most of the participants were born with disabilities that left them wheelchair-bound, they wanted to spread awareness about spinal cord injuries resulting from road accidents or fall from height.
“There are around 15 lakh persons with spinal cord injuries in India and only 25 centres to treat them,” said a participant, Guru Nagarajan, who works at CMC Vellore. There is no cure as yet for spinal cord injuries. The only way to prevent them is to observe safety, an expert said.
