TRIPTY BHATTACHARYYA MEMORIAL TRUST

To establish a home for geriatric patients with ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE in the near future to house 50 patients and to provide them a hope that there stands a life with ALZHEIMER’S as well. TRIPTY BHATTACHARYYA MEMORIAL TRUST will be a beacon of hope in the near future.

Objective of the trust

The objective of this venture is to establish an Alzheimer’s day care and research center in the memory of TRIPTY BHATTACHARYYA. The project will have the following objectives:

1.  Providing loving care to patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) by well-trained caregivers with focus on improved quality of life and comfort.
2. Generating Alzheimer’s care awareness at community level.
3. Providing opportunities for socialization and interaction
4. To ensure a safe and friendly environment and providing the family members and near ones respite from their care giving duties for the day.
5. All activities of the centre will be intended to instill confidence and promote independence in day to day tasks.
6. AD is a neurodegenerative disease mostly characterized by slow start followed by gradual cognitive, memory and functional impairment. Despite long-standing research in AD-related dementia, mechanisms contributing to Alzheimer’s disease initiation and progression are poorly understood. Notably, systematic monitoring of disease progression and effective therapeutic strategies are currently lacking, with a major emphasis being on the management of any co-existing health disparities. It is of utmost importance that patients with AD have loving and nurturing companion, who can provide not only functional support but also offer emotional stability by being with the patients in the true sense. However, in the scheme of modern lifestyle, AD patients are often left alone for a significant part of the day, when their family members have to go out for their daily livelihood. This is not only detrimental for the patients’ health but can also be dangerous, especially for patients with very low cognitive ability. To this end, the proposed day care center will provide a “home away from home” for AD patients in the form of a safe, loving and nurturing haven for the period of time when their family members are away and busy with their daily activities.
7. Our society often attaches a stigma to AD by thinking that it is nothing but some mental imbalance caused by aging and such patients are viewed as a nuisance to the society and family. But nothing could be further from the truth. While it is true that both AD and aging have multiple overlapping symptoms, , the underlying pathophysiological mechanisms and severity of symptoms in AD is much different from aging. The research center component of the unit will spread awareness of the disease by holding in-person and virtual seminars and also via social media. Data and information for these seminars will be collected by members of the trust from India and USA.
8. Know Alzheimer’s will be a continued mission of the TRUST. Early and accurate detection of ALZHEIMER’S disease is of utter importance, Very often it is misled with Dementia and gets further worsen with time. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common type of dementia
9. In summary, affectionate and devoted patient care, as well as raised awareness of the disease and associated care will be provided by the center.

Motivation

The trust (Alzheimer’s daycare and research center) was conceptualized by Mr. Arnab Bhattacharyya (Founder) and Dr. Pallab Kumar Bhattacharyya, after they lost their mother Mrs.Tripty Bhattacharyya to Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders. Late Tripty Bhattacharyya had planted the seeds of love, ethics and principles in her sons, which motivated them in the formation of the trust.  

An affectionate mother with high intellectual ability in the field of Bengali literature, Tripty Bhattacharyya was an avid Tagore scholar, who penned three books containing essays and short poems. However, the wrath of Alzheimer’s disease resulted in her severe cognitive decline and memory loss. She gradually lost her physical mobility, control urine and bowel functions and ability to swallow, and eventually she exhaled her last breath.

Arnab Bhattacharyya, the elder son, dedicated all his time in giving loving and devoted care to his mother. Especially during the Covid period, he was the sole caregiver for more than 2 years. He was there every step of the way with his mother and firsthand witnessed the phases of this debilitating neurodegenerative disease. He saw how his mother’s whole existence became dependent on him and how she gradually became like a child with no thought-process of her own, and despite of constant interactions and involvement, his mother entered a phase of not recognizing her own son.

Pallab Bhattacharyya, the younger son residing in the USA, realized during his daily telephone calls to his mother that how over time, the voice on the other side of the phone changed from some meaningless but complete sentences to meaningless incomplete sentences to incoherent words to total silence.

But deep inside, both sons sensed the emotion and feeling of love in their Mamoni, which would be manifested by her mention of loving kiss to her sons. But at some point that too stopped and thus ended the journey that had started exactly 82 years ago in the town of Narail of current Bangladesh in the banks of the river Chitra.

However, that was the only the beginning. The sons realized that to honor their mother’s legacy, they had to do something so that they could serve individuals suffering from AD. Pallab Bhattacharyya, who was already performing research on developing and implementing MRI scans to measure metabolite levels over a large region of the brain with high precision, implemented the method in AD research, with an objective of early detection of the disease, so that years down the road no body suffers like their Mamoni. The brothers found out that while a lot of research and clinical progress have been made to understand the disease and mitigate its ill effects, a lot more is yet to be done. They also found out about a lack of proper care for people with AD and more so about the consciousness that elderly people with AD have just as much purpose in life as the general healthy population, and should not be ignored.

With support of the family members and well wishers both the brothers decided to form an Alzheimer’s Day Care & Research Centre  in the memory of their late mother, from where the journey of TRIPTY BHATTACHARYYA MEMORIAL TRUST started  with a holistic approach as a registered nonprofit charitable Trust.