Girl drank water after 7 yrs

Ahmadabad, May 26: A girl finally able to drink water after 7 years, the hospital's officials had made surgery successfully.

looking into the matter, Ram Prakash (40) and his wife Preeti (30) as their 8-year-old daughter Neha will finally be able to lead a normal life. Neha was 1.5 years old when she accidentally drank acid and the resultant corrosive poisoning almost destroyed her entire esophagus leaving just 1 cm intact.

The damage was so severe that she could not even swallow her own saliva.

The family who hails from Uttar Pradesh got her operated in Lucknow first, after which an artificial tube was fitted into her body through which she was fed liquids.

She could not eat or drink anything from her mouth. Neha's mother Preeti said, "We could only give her milk, dal or khichdi and that too in a liquidated manner. We never sent her to school because we were scared that some child might end up pulling her tube and cause her injury". For years, her parents ran around different hospitals to get their daughter treated but to no avail.

Most of the government doctors considered the operation to be too risky and affording a private super specialist surgeon was not possible for the family. Two months ago they came to Ahmedabad and started their daughter's treatment at VS Hospital.

On May 9, a team of 8 doctors operated on her for 5 hours and reconstructed her oesophagus. Now the child is able to drink water, juices and eat ice-cream as well. Hasmukh Vora, a gastroenterological surgeon who led the team said, "We performed an operation called ‘Gastric pull-up with Esophageal Reconstruction".

We opened her abdomen and created an 8-inch long incision from her abdomen to her neck to create a new passage for the food. We removed the dead part and connected the intact part with a new passage.

We started with water but now she can have even normal portions of solid food like chapatis. Dr The tube will be removed after 3 weeks as a precautionary measure. She will be discharged on Thursday.