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Ataxia: Nothing being done about it

More and more physically handicapped people are accepting the fact that they are different and getting on with their lives with support and help from others.

One such physical handicap people suffer form is ataxia. Ataxia basically means lack of co-ordination. It is both a genetic and non-hereditary disorder with symptoms like unsteady and shaky gait, slurred speech and like. Some of the ways people can get sporadic ataxia is: after a viral infection, stroke, vitamin deficiency, alcohol abuse, etc. In India awareness about ataxia is slowly increasing but there is no institute/organization /NGO I know of which deals exclusively with ataxia.

However there is an American NGO by the name of National Ataxia Foundation which is active in the field. Their website www.ataxia.org hosts plenty of information about ataxia and they takeout a tri monthly journal called Generations which can be subscribed. For further details one can contact becky@ataxia.org.

At present they do not have any Indian chapter but work in this regard is going on.

Abhinav Kedia

The author is an ataxic patient himself and can be contacted on abhinav_kedia_2000@yahoo.com the information presented in this article has been reproduced with permission from NAF, USA.