Fast rising water levels forced elders to skip medicines.
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Chennai: It may not have been the Apocalypse, but a majority of Chennaiites, not on medication, were found to have their blood pressure level shoot up and several elders who were either rushed to the first floor or hurriedly evacuated from their dwellings owing to fast rising water levels, had to forego their routine medicines.
A large number of families with elders and children who could not go out of their houses had to remain standing in water or live in stagnant water inside their houses. All these surfaced during a screening camp organised for the flood-affected persons in the city by S10 Health.
“Nearly 60 per cent of the adults aged 30 and above who were not under medication for hypertension, showed alarmingly high levels because of anxiety. Perhaps they did not expect their properties to get damaged by massive flooding,” claimed Sridharan Sivan, founder S10 Health.
The doctors and nurses who screened the people at the badly affected areas of Mudichur, Kotturpurum, Saidapet, Velacherry, Pallikaranai, Sholinganallur, Kilpauk, CIT Nagar and Manali, found people developing Varicose — veins gnarled or enlarged due to standing and walking upright thus increasing the pressure in the veins of the lower body.
“Varicose patients had to be shifted to hospitals for treatment. And many elders either ran out of their regular stock of medicines or could not carry the medicines with them while being shifted to safer places. They were also treated at our 28 camps,” says Sridharan whose organisation was the first private organisation to provide medical relief to the inmates of the Old Age Homes. In addition counselling on coping up with the realities, personal and environment hygiene was also provided at the camps.
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( Source : deccan chronicle )
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