SMA, stop!

Dasha will turn 9 years old soon, eight of them, she is struggling with a rare progressive disease of SMA – spinal muscular atrophy. It is the disease that takes a person's ability to walk, stand, sit, eat, and even breathe; it literally eats up muscles. Before Dasha was 1 year and 2 months, like all children, she could squat and stand on her own, bending down and picking up a toy, but now these skills have been lost. Gradually all muscles of the body atrophy, paralysis of the locomotor system, heart and respiration occur.

Now Dasha can still walk a short distance, holding onto a support or her mother's hand. To slow down the progress of the disease, as well as to maintain and preserve the skills of walking, the girl every 3 months needs to undergo rehabilitation, take a lot of medications, special nutrition with amino acids, got very painful injections. After each course of treatment, the child feels much better, can stand longer, walk up to 50 meters.

In Europe, the SMA has not been a sentence for 2 years for now. Children get medicine that can completely slow down the progression of this disease. But while this drug is not in Ukraine, we must try to slow down muscle paralysis and keep Dasha’s walking skills as long as possible. Unfortunately, this requires a lot of financial costs. Intellectually, Dasha is no different from her peers, she is very clever, she is happy with good grades in school, she is engaged in a drama club, she tries very hard in swimming lessons. She is the same eight-year-old girl like everyone else, just because of an annoying breakdown in the DNA chain, she became a hostage to her body.

Help Dasha's family to raise money to maintain a stable state of the child, and she will certainly wait for the medicine that will save her life.

Name: Chumashvili Dariia, 17.04.2010

City: Mariupol

Diagnosis: spinal muscular atrophy