Sandesh Shahi received a walker at a camp organised for children with disabilities at Tilgufa Municipality in Kalikot district recently.

The nine-year-old from the village of Chhapre is disabled since birth and requires assistance walking. Now, with the aid of the walker, he can get around on his own.

Sandesh’s elder brother Ramesh, who is sixteen, also has a similar condition as his younger brother. He, too, received a mobility aid at the camp.

The boys’ father, Gorakh Shahi, was grateful for the camp for offering his two sons a certain degree of freedom of mobility.

“The little properties that I owned, I sold them for the treatment of my two sons. I cannot spend any more on their treatment. I thank the camp for providing my sons with mobility aids,” he said.

Like the Shahi brothers, Shankar Neupane also benefitted from the camp.

The seventeen-year-old from Tilgufa Municipality Ward No. 8 is paralysed from the waist down since birth. He received a wheelchair at the camp.

“With the wheelchair, I don’t feel as limited. I can move about along the plain surface. I feel more independent than before,” he said.

The camp was organised at the initiative of Tilgufa Municipality and Subhakalika Rural Municipality at Khallagad and Sukatiya.

Children living with various disabilities received medicines, medical exams, physiotherapy and assistive materials at the camp.

Manaraj Shahi, the health coordinator of Tilgufa Municipality, said sixty-one children with disabilities received medical care at the camp and eighteen children were given mobility aids, such as wheelchairs, walkers and crutches.

“We plan to organise similar camps in other parts of the municipality in the future,” Shahi said.

Dr Krishnaraj Bhatta, a medical specialist associated with Nepal Rastriya Samaj Kalyan Sangh, a social organisation based in Kanchanpur, had conducted medical exams on the disabled children.

According to the government data, out of 5,000 disabled people in Kalikot, more than 3,000 are children.