Ms Esi Foriwaa Amoaful, Deputy Director, Nutrition at the
Family Health Division of the Ghana Health Service on Thursday advocated for a
nationwide training of health staff to enable them identify children with
Cerebral Palsy at the very early stage
“It seems that many parents with children who are cerebral
palsy do not know what is happening to their children, they are forced to
believe that their children are
suffering from spiritual attacks and
therefore do not do much to help their children.”
Ms Amoaful said this when the International Centre for
Evidence in Disability in collaboration with cbm, a Christian Development
Organization organized a meeting to share findings of a base-line study to
determine the quality of life of care takers of children with Cerebral Palsy
The study is being undertaking by CBM, in collaboration with
the International Centre for Evidence in Disability of the London School of
Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the University of Ghana (UG) to evaluate the
impact of a community –based parent training programme for children with
Cerebral Palsy in Ghana.
As part of the programme, Specialists, including,
Physiotherapists, Pediatricians, Nutritionists, Speech therapists, and a team
of researchers visited selected parts of the country to educated and train
parents of children with Cerebral palsy on basic physiotherapy skills
The Specialists also organizes a three hour community
meeting once a month and a 45 minutes home visit to such parents to see how
their children are progress and work together to achieve basic development
milestones of the children
Mrs Maria Zuurmond, Research Fellow at the International
Centre for Evidence in Disability, sharing some findings with stakeholders,
said about 70 percent of the children with Cerebral Palsy they are using in
their study are malnourished
She explained that most of the parents do not make the
needed time to feed these children and some do not feed them with the right
food.
“We noticed that some of the parents or care givers feed the
children in a lying position, because the children are not able to sit, they
choke on the food and are not able to feed properly, within a short time of our
study we have already lost six of such children,” she said, pointing out that
it could be due to malnutrition or maltreatment of the children
As part of our programme, we are teaching parents and care
givers how to handle the children and we have already have evidence of mothers
who are now holding their children with Cerebral Palsy well and seeing an
improvement in their health.
Mrs Zuurmond said 84 percent of the parents of children with
Cerebral Palsy have no knowledge what is happening with their children.
The study is using 76 children in total across the country.
The team uses a parents training manual titled: “Getting to Know Cerebral
Palsy” to teach the parents. The project is a 24 month project which started in
January 2015 and ends December 2016.
Dr Isabella Sagoe-Moses, National Child Health Coordinator
at the Ghana Health Service, reiterated the need for more education and
awareness on Cerebral palsy.
She said: “If more people know about Cerebral Palsy, then
more people will be supportive of these children instead of maltreating them.”
Mrs Hannah Awadzi, Initiator of the Special Mothers Project
in Ghana, who commended the project, said there was an urgent need to train
mothers of children with Cerebral Palsy with the basic skills in physiotherapy
and speech therapy to enhance the quality of life of these children.
“I believe that the parents, especially the mothers are the
best people to understand and handle their children well, if the mothers are
empowered they can also create awareness about the condition and increase
acceptance of these children in our society.”
Mrs Sandra Carsamer Asante, senior physiotherapist at the
Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, who is part of the team implementing the project
said, she had seen evidence of improvement and enhanced living with the
families that are being piloted for the project already.
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