The National Council for Persons with Disabilities (NCPWD) has urged North Eastern region communities to stop stigmatization of children with disabilities and instead bring them out to hospitals for therapy to improve their health.
Speaking during an outreach disability assessment session in Garissa Town, NCPWD’s Chief Officer, Autism and Related Development Disabilities Winfred Mbugua said they are working in collaboration with hospital officials to diagnose and start early medication for children with disabilities to enable them walk or talk in future.
According to Winfred, the two-day outreach program in collaboration with the Kenya Institute of Special Education, Garissa Referral Hospital and Hope Mobility is targeting to reach at least 250 children in Garissa County for assessment, therapy and assistance with wheelchairs and other assistive devices to improve the mobility of the children.
Some of the causes of the developmental disabilities and disorders include prolonged labour especially for people who are far away from hospitals, home delivery, infections during birth and premature births.
“There is a lot of stigma in the communities especially with cerebral palsy where parents keep their children hidden or secluded from others even making it hard for these children to be brought for assessment and medication,” Winfred said.
“We also have a challenge in accessing children whose parents stop bringing them for therapy hence losing all the improvement achieved. Due to this, we have been training some parents the basic home therapy technics so that they may be able to help their children while they await appointment dates,” she added.
She said that taking their disable children for therapy and schools will help them in the future especially for economic purposes where with knowledge they can be able to earn a living on their own.
Apart from donating assistive devices, the council is also doing other programs which include cash transfers for parents and guardians of children with disabilities, scholarships programs, building friendly infrastructure for special schools among others.
Benjamin Sifuna, an occupational therapist urged the government to invest in training more therapists noting that there are only three therapists at the Garissa level 4 Hospital who are overwhelmed by more than 30 patients per week.
He called on all parents with children living with disabilities not to shy off from bringing them to receive the required medication to ease the severity of the disabilities.
By Erick Kyalo
