Parents of little Asya eagerly awaiting daughter’s treatment

The parents of eleven-month-old Turkish Cypriot infant, Asya Polatli, are finally hopeful now that their child is receiving treatment but are also eagerly awaiting the arrival of key medication.

“This is the first time we have come so close to [her] recovery, we are excited,” her father Ozan Polatli said outside the Makarios hospital in Nicosia.

Asya was admitted to hospital on September 27 to undergo gene treatment for rare, life-shortening spinal muscular atrophy (SMA).

Ozan told daily Yeni Duzen that they are counting down the days until her gene therapy medication – Zolgensma – arrives, saying that they cannot be fully satisfied until Asya receives the medicine.

He said that they had received many promises in the past but were let down.

The family even applied for free treatment in Switzerland, where 100 children with the disease are treated each year without cost but Asya did not make the list.

The father explained that the couple were told by doctors during the eleventh week of the pregnancy that the embryo suffered from the disease, but the parents chose not to terminate the pregnancy believing that the illness would not manifest.

Asya was fully diagnosed with the illness at four months old while she was unable to move from the age of two months.

The one-off Zolgensma treatment costs around €2m, leaving the family with no choice but to launch fundraisers in a bid to raise the full amount, but after the issue was brought to the attention of the Cyprus government, it was announced that the Republic would pay for Asya’s treatment.

Other bids to raise the funds failed when promised donations from businessmen never materialised but Polatli noted that a seven-year-old boy raised roughly €1,000 from selling bracelets.

The funds that were raised for the family helped facilitate Asya’s journey from Turkey – where she had originally gone for treatment – to the Republic of Cyprus, via Greece.

The father also described the immense heartbreak imposed on the family, most notably on their twin three-year-old daughters who have now been staying for a week with their grandparents.

Ozan said that the twins are incredibly eager to see Asya and their parents but so far have not been able to do so.

The father said that Asya’s case was brought to the attention of the Cyprus government by head of the Turkish Cypriot teachers’ union (KTOS) Sener Elcil and the ‘This Homeland is Ours’, platform.

According to the daily, Elcil had tried to contact officials in the south including President Nicos Anastasiades, to reach out and help Asya. In his letters, he was asking that the government cover the cost of Asya’s treatment as it had done in the past with Greek Cypriot child, Antonis Andreou, with the same condition.

Elcil reportedly received a response to a letter he sent Foreign Minister Nikos Christodoulides, that the government was ready to do everything possible to help Asya.

Ozan said that Asya is set to be the first child to ever receive the treatment in Cyprus, as the young Antonis was administered the therapy in the US.