Four years ago, she was born with a double whammy - a hole in her heart and one of the rarest blood groups - in an Odisha village.
Now, as Iteeshree Nayak from Chandpur village, Kankadahad block of Dhenkanal district plays with her sisters Rani and Pree-tishree before going to school, her parents, homemaker Madhavi and daily wager Sanjay, can't believe their luck.
The little girl is alive thanks to the efforts of three states - her own Odisha government funded her complex surgery under Rashtriya Bal Swasthya Karyakram Sc-heme; Bengal's paediatric cardiologist Dr Amitabha Chattopadhyay of Narayana Superspeciality Hospital in Howrah closed the hole; and Jharkhand donor Umakant Mandal gave the girl the blood she needed to survive the operating table.
Read more of this in a report by Pinaki Majumdar published in The Telegraph...
