Eight-Year-Old Grace

MEXICO CITY – Grace is 8 years old with a rare disease that makes her suffer 400 epileptic convulsions every day. She doesn’t know it, but her case is making history in Mexico following a judge’s decision to allow the import of a cannabis derivative for her treatment.

“Grace acts like a baby girl no more than 6 months old. She depends on all of us,” the child’s father, Raul Elizalde, calling the judge’s decision “very courageous.”

On Aug. 17, Judge Martin Santos extended legal protection to authorities who permit Graciela Elizalde’s parents to import a medicine containing cannabidiol, a substance banned by Mexico’s General Law of Health.

Graciela suffers from Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome, characterized by powerful epileptic fits, even while she sleeps.

Meanwhile her parents Raul and Mayela, who live in Monterrey, Mexico have tried everything, from anti-convulsive medications that are legal in Mexico to a corpus callosotomy in 2013, a surgical procedure that entails cutting the band of fibers connecting the hemispheres of the brain.

But none of those procedures worked for Graciela, the attorney said, which is why the parents decided to try cannabidiol, a substance that relaxes the muscles of the body.

In order to get the substance into the country, the parents will travel later this month to the United States, where specialists will prescribe the exact treatment for Grace, a condition imposed by the judge for bringing cannabidiol into Mexico.

Grace, at her 8 years of age, can be “removing the first brick from the wall of prohibition” of cannabis in Mexico.

– Latin American Herald Tribune