Helping Georgi

Hello

Foreword by Dr Margarita Sarishvili, Vice Chair of the Bristol Tbilisi Association

Georgi Suladze’s life changed in on a hot summer’s day in 2007, as did that of his family. A few months before his 7th birthday he took ill and fell into a coma which lasted for a few weeks. Encephalitis is an indiscriminate illness which causes inflammation of the brain. Even with immediate hospital treatment this can be fatal, and the prognosis for survivors is usually some form of brain damage. Georgi was relatively lucky - he lived, but he lost the ability to walk on his own or to talk. Two years later he is still severley challenged in these aspects, but he is making slow progress and is otherwise just a normal little boy. He just can’t stand on his own two feet or talk very well.

Georgi is a growing boy. Aside from the problems which this basic fact causes (i.e. he is getting bigger and heavier to lift every day - it now takes 2 people to safely lift him, so 2 adults need to be with him most of the time), simply living in my native country of Georgia adds to the difficulty of providing him with the care he needs to recover sufficiently well to give him a chance to live the rest of his life relatively independently, and with some degree of comfort.

I wish Georgi all the best in his recovery and I look forward to coming back to his web site on a regular basis to hear how he’s progressing. I hope you will do the same.

Please consider making a kind donation to help to look after Georgi. He’s getting bigger now and he needs 24/7 care from two adults. Unfortunately Georgi lives in a country with a nearly non-existent social services system, so the government only provides about $30 a month, which just about covers the cost of his physiotherapist for a couple of visits. Without a regular income in the house even basic care for Georgi is becoming impossible.

To keep up to date on Georgi’s progress, and to automatically receive new posts which Georgi himself makes, please click on the orange news feed icon in your browser’s address bar.

Georgi receives a tremendous amount of support from his family and friends, but social support from the authorities in Georgia is practically non-existent. If, for instance, he lived in the UK then there would be a number of allowances¹ which could be claimed to help with the financial aspects of his care, both for Georgi and his care-givers, and the health support services there would help him in ways which he can only dream about.

In Georgia, Georgi receives a “pension” of just 53 Georgian Lari per month. This is equivalent to just 31 US Dollars, 19 British Pounds, or 22 Euros, and this is the only assistance his family receive - either monetarily or otherwise. Although his parents try their hardest to make ends meet, the current economic downturn has had a devastating impact on their finances, and they are no longer able to afford to properly care for Georgi.

Adapting to change

During the first year of Georgi’s illness, caring for him was difficult as everyone needed to come to terms with what had happened - especially poor Georgi himself. Fortunately a steady income stream during the first, crucial, year made things a lot easier than they would have otherwise been. The family were able to move to a new apartment, closer to Georgi’s grand-parents, and the rest of his mother’s family, and they could afford to pay for physical and speech therapy - a luxury many families in Georgia have to learn to do without.

The war between Georgia and Russia in the summer of 2008 came, and quickly went, but the effects of that war on the Georgian economy in terms of a downturn in the confidence which investors had in putting money into new projects, coupled with the global economic downturn, meant that there was a sharp decline in the number of jobs which were available - whether in Georgia or anywhere else.

The second year of caring for Georgi was fraught with problems of its own: little or no work meant cutbacks in the family budget. First to go was Georgi’s speech therapy, along with a plethora of “little things” like small treats for Georgi, or respite care². Georgi’s physiotherapy is crucial to his recovery, so his family are making every effort to maintain that aspect of his care though this puts a tremendous strain on the family’s purse strings and, without a sharp upturn in fortunes, this will need to be suspended.

How can you help?

Although the cost of living in Georgia is relatively low, and he is surrounded by family and friends who do all they can to help, caring for Georgi is still an expensive business. Right now his father is doing a small amount of work copy editing, which he does through Collaborative Enterprises (CE). If you want to help Georgi please support CE in their work by visiting their web site and reading about their services. Of course, you can also help by sending Georgi a message - Georgi loves receiving messages, and you can be certain of a reply!

Click here to see where all the kind people live, who've visited my site.