Click to play videoPuri: Seven-year-old Puja, five-year-old Liza and their two-year-old brother Raja are like any other children their age.
They love to play and eat chocolates. But there's one thing that makes them different. All three suffer from the incurable blood disease - Thalassaemia.
Their father, Debakar Pradhan, a newspaper hawker, doesn’t earn enough to be able to arrange blood transfusion for them.
"Now I don't even have food to feed my children properly, how can I arrange blood for them? If I don't get any help, they'll all die," says Pradhan.
Pradhan reads every article on Thalassaemia, hoping for news of some breakthrough in treating the disorder.
The Red Cross Society in Orissa has passed a resolution to provide free blood for Thalassaemia patients.
But this is hardly implemented. CNN-IBN spoke to the state health minister, Duryodhan Majhi, who heads the society, and he has now promised to provide lifelong treatment for all three children.
"I'll enquire into why blood was not given to them by the collector and the CDMO. And I'll make sure they get blood whenever they need it," he promises.
But Pradhan doesn't believe the promise as he says it will be forgotten as soon as the media attention is over.
Scientists are quite optimistic that very soon they will find a cure for Thalassaemia but by then it might be too late for these children who desperately need immediate help to survive.
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