The Standard Group Plc is a multi-media organization with investments in media platforms spanning newspaper print
operations, television, radio broadcasting, digital and online services. The Standard Group is recognized as a
leading multi-media house in Kenya with a key influence in matters of national and international interest.
A five-year-old girl is facing a grim battle against cancer after her mother dismissed the first signs of the disease as a pimple.
Heartbroken Karan Sigh has revealed the pain she now feels watching her beloved daughter Aarti go through treatment for a rare cancer after he and the family thought her symptoms were just a spot.
A huge fleshy mass has now consumed little Aarti's right eye while doctors have said the youngster's chances of survival are slim after the cancer spread to her brain.
The child was diagnosed with Retinoblastoma, a rare, rapidly developing cancer that develops from the immature cells of the retina but the initial signs of the condition were ignored for many months.
Mrs Singh said: "It was a small blister and we completely ignored it for few months until she complained of pain and poor vision.
"This is unpardonable. We can't believe we allowed it to reach this stage but we never knew it was going to be this disastrous."
Mr Singh, 45, says her daughter developed the symptoms in late 2013 and they used to apply home remedies to relive her from irritation but when things went out of control went to a doctor at their village.
As the mass kept growing they rushed her to Maharaja Yeshwantrao Hospital (MY) in Indore city where shocked doctors diagnosed her with retinoblastoma and immediately started the treatment.
However doctors at the MY hospital refused to believe that a pimple is the cause of Aarti’s eye cancer.
Doctors at the MY hospital say Aarti's condition is critical, as her parents brought her at the fag end of the disease and any delay in treatment could prove to be fatal.
"If her parents had brought her to the hospital earlier, we could have saved her eye but now the tumor is so big that it’s difficult to operate it," Dr Ulka Srivastava, head eye surgeon of MY hospital said.
"A surgery is out of question and we can't even give her chemotherapy as her haemoglobin level is very low," she said.
“For now we have put her on medication to increase her haemoglobin level.
Once the haemoglobin level is increased we can then give her chemotherapy.”
The tumour has spread to her brain and we can only hope for a miracle, said Srivastava.
Singh says they are paying the price for their ignorance but want their daughter to live even if it means she loses her eyesight.
"We are not bothered about her eye anymore. All we want is she should survive and come with us to home," he said."There's no harsher punishment for the parents than to see their child die. But then how can we reconcile with the fact that we killed her."
join