LAUTOKA – Over the past three months, a father of three has spent $650 a week to stay alive. He is grateful his life has been prolonged but is agonised that family funds are running low.
Vijay Vikash Reddy was diagnosed with end-stage kidney disease earlier this year. The 31-year old former Punja and Sons Limited’s Lautoka-branch sales manager is in dire need of a transplant.
Mr Reddy undergoes three dialysis sessions a week at $200 per treatment – plus an injection that costs $50. The total amounts to $650, excluding travel expenses from Ba to Suva.
His mother Sarojni Lala said they need $46,000 to get him to India for a kidney transplant. She said they have been fundraising but conceded they could not raise a large sum on their own.
“We made 2000 tickets to raise at least $20,000 for his operation but we are running out of time. We have sold more than half the tickets but we still have a couple of hundred left. We have been doing all sorts of fundraising but it is a large sum that’s needed,” said Mrs Lala.
The ticket, which was to be drawn on October 23, will now be drawn in November.
Reddy has been unable to work as he is progressively unwell with tiredness, malaise, shortness of breath, poor appetite and has difficulty in movement.
Being the only breadwinner of his family, the Reddy family have been put through many months of heartache and hardship. “He has three children and the youngest is only 10 months. We want his children to grow up with their father and we ask for whatever assistance to save our son’s life. Punja and Sons was helping him out with the expenses for the past two months but we understand that it’s a huge sum and we need other sources of funding,” she said.
