*Wants government to support children with special needs
A Non-Governmental Organisation, Sechild Care Centre (SCC), has urged parents not to write off children with cerebral palsy (CP) from the family.
The initiator of the foundation, Mrs Kawan Aondofa-Anjira, who made this call during a fundraising dinner organised to assist children with special needs said even though ‘cerebral palsy’ is not curable, the affected children will be useful to themselves and the society only when they are loved and cared for.
Mrs Aondofa-Anjira said, “These children are intelligent, they are teachable, all that the parents need is to give them the right resources to grow.
“Children with special needs are not spirit, they are not devil incarnate, they are human beings. They’ve only got a condition that if understood, they will be cared for.
“If you have a child that has CP, it is not curable but if the child is not cared for, they will never grow to be useful to themselves and the society but if they are cared for, they will grow up to be useful to themselves and the society”.
The initiator of SCC called on government to create enabling environment for these children.
She added that one of the basic challenges of the centre was space to keep the children for physio-therapy as children continue to multiply day by day.
She said, “We have been managing even with the space constraint, but however, we started with an expansion project which is already completed but waiting to be furnish, that is part of the reason why we are doing this fund raising today.
“The response from the government has not been so good; we have written several letters to Federal Ministry of Health for them to give us physio-therapy, doctors, wheel chairs, assisting devices but none has materialise.
‘’Government is not doing enough. I’ve written severally to the ministry of health for partnership, I told them we don’t want money. Send physiotherapists to us; send doctors to us give atheistic devices. You can give us wheel chairs, but unfortunately, for over 12 years that has not happened. It has been individual support, personal funds, and individual agencies’’.
Earlier, an Assistant Director with the Nigeria Communication Commission (NCC) Mr Solomon Igbayue, said more funds were required make it the care facilities more conducive for the children.
He also called for the support of specialists in form of teachers that would pay more attention to the peculiarities of these children, adding that these are children with special needs.
Igbayue, who stressed the need for the country to have specialized hospitals for people of these nature, added that the conventional hospitals in the country lacks the special facilities for these children.
“If we have a hospital that can take care of cerebral palsy children that can take care of them in a special way special treatment, take care of their therapy, if we can create all these things, we can make the atmosphere an enabling one for them.
“And with these, you will realize that these children will grow up and become what they want to be, we have seen some of them who had these challenges and they overcome, some of them are engineers, doctors, advocate.
“Funding is key for the care of these children, Sechild is scouting for these funding by themselves without any support from anywhere, most of these children are on Pampers 24/7, and some of them have special medication they take’’.
Mrs Apha Mane-Iber, a board member of the NGO, noted that most children with this kind of children are ashamed and not bold to bring them out as a result of discrimination in the society.
She disclosed that the founder of Sechild care centre, who happened to be her younger sister had two of her four children who are born with cerebral palsy, in what she said motivated her to start the centre.
According to her, when her sister gave birth to these children, people were advising her to throw them away, but she never succumb to their advice as a result of likeness for children.
She also called on government particularly ministries of health and women affairs to assist in whatever form to make the care of these children worthwhile which she said they are now many at Sechild care centre.
Mr Aver Gaver, a director at the National Human Right Commission (NHRC), cautioned those killing such children as a result of their vulnerability to desist from such practice.
Gaver, who is also a legal practitioner, added that there are laws that protect persons with disability which Nigeria was part of the countries that rectified it at the UN convention, and that the child right act was part of it.
According to her, anyone who kills these children has committed homicide which is an offence before law, and that there is a section of the law that pronounce purnishment for anyone who committed murder.
She also called for more sensitisation, adding that there are not enough sensitisation about these children especially at the local communities, where she alleged the crimes of killing these children are still in practice.
