The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Epileptic centre inaugurated

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, May 27, 2006

Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Epileptic centre inaugurated

Staff Reporter

Bangalore: Rotary Dr. Syed Ahmed Memorial Trust Epileptic Center was inaugurated at Narayana Hrudayalaya Institute of Neuro Sciences by Harshanand Swamiji here on Thursday.

Devi Shetty, Chairman of Narayana Hrudayalaya, said if epilepsy was left untreated it would debilitate an individual.

"A programme across the country that would bring back the epileptics to their normal lifestyle is the need of the hour," said Dr. Shetty.

According to the population surveys of developing countries, treatment gap defined as the percentage of persons with active epilepsy who had never received treatment amounted to 80-90 per cent.

Medication

Nearly 70 to 80 per cent of people newly diagnosed with epilepsy could easily be cured with medication. But 30 per cent of them did not achieve any substantial seizure control and continued to have epileptic seizures regardless of treatment with medicines. Such a type of epilepsy that could be treated by surgeries was termed as medically intractable or refractory epilepsy, Dr. Shetty added. Rajesh Iyer, Consultant Neurologist and Epileptologist at Narayana Hrudayalaya Institute, said that 0.5 per cent of the population were epileptics and were discriminated.

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