Friday, August 13, 2021

Centre for Childhood and Learning Disability begins mobile rehabilitation clinic


The Centre for Childhood and Learning Disability has started a mobile rehabilitation clinic for children with cerebral palsy.

The therapy clinic organized every Saturday provides one stop therapy services for the children.

Physical Therapists, Occupational Therapists, speech therapists and other health professionals are brought together to provide services for families of children with cerebral palsy and other disabilities at no cost to the families.

Dr Kwame Sakyi, Director of CLCD said the community based mobile rehabilitation clinic was a pilot to equip parents with the necessary therapy skills for them to practice with their children at home.

The mobile rehabilitation clinic is done in partnership with the Princess Marie Louise hospital in Accra and the Special Mothers Project, an advocacy programme for children with cerebral palsy and their families. So far the programme has reached about 50 families.

He said for now the rehabilitation clinic is done in just one community but when successful it will be extended to other communities and urged families of children with cerebral palsy and other disabilities to patronize the service.

Tuesday, August 10, 2021

Caregiving, a thriving sector that we are ignoring

Niek, a Dutch was taking Adwoa, a Ghanaian on a visit to the Netherlands around his neighbourhood in and pointed to a building that housed the aged.

Adwoa shrugged and Niek noticed it, since Niek had lived most of his productive life in Africa as a Tropical doctor, he knew how most Africans perceived aged homes, so he quickly added, your country is developing and soon you will find the need for such establishment.

Many years down the line, Adwoa, a Ghanaian living in Ghana is considering setting up what she wants to term as a Care Giving Institute to train especially the youth to take up careers as caregivers.

Adwoa, grew up in Ghana in a middle-income home, growing up, her household always had people who were not her biological family staying with them. Adwoa’s mum was a baker and her dad worked with an international cooperation

She had three other siblings, however, at any point in time, there were two extra hands living with them, those people usually stayed with the family for a minimum of two or three years and her family would then enroll them into a trade, such as hair dressing or dress making.

Male hands that stayed with them were also enrolled into carpentry or were supported to learn fitting (mechanics).

In Ghana, the norm was that if you started a new family as a young lady and you were expecting a child, you usually will move to your mother’s home for support or your mother will move into your house to support you.

However, Adwoa’s mother died early and by the time she was ready to start a family, she was on her own.

It is becoming a common in Ghana to start a family and not have anyone readily available to support your new family with child nurturing and house keeping

What was termed as house helps have taken on a new identity, some call them Nannies, others call them house keepers and for families raising children with disability or special needs, they are called caregivers.

Not only that, there are families in Ghana now needing care for their aged, and so it is common to see people advertise on social media for care services for the aged and persons who have gotten a stroke.

Sika, a Ghanaian living in the United States who shared her experience living abroad said in the developed countries, caregiving is a big industry.

Termed as Certified Nursing Assistants (CNA), they are considered an integral part of the patient process in healthcare

Also called a nurse aid or a patient care assistant they help with tasks including turning or moving patient, bathing patients, grooming patients by brushing their teeth, combing their hair, feeding patients and documenting their food and liquid intake, cleaning rooms and bed linens, assisting with some medical procedures, taking care of wounds just to mention a few.

 Sika said satirically, that “in the states you need certification to wipe the bum of an aged person”

As Ghana continues to develop, many, especially those starting new families have expressed the need to professionalize what we termed house help especially for families raising children with disability.

Adwoa, sharing her experiences, said, “I am a working mother and my children are young, I need someone with the right mind frame to take on a career as a professional caregiver who will understand the role, I want them to play.”

Adwoa says she has encountered a lot of wrong attitudes from those who come in to work as caregivers for her children, attitudes ranging from using wrong words, to hitting the children wrongly when they shouldn’t.

“I have developed a welcome pack for anybody who comes into my home to work as a caregiver and in it I am explicit about what your roles and responsibilities are as well as your rights and your rewards,” she added.

Adwoa says she is considering starting a caregiver institute that will teach and train especially the youth to take on careers as caregivers.

She says: “I want to train caregivers who respect my family values, who do not impose their ideas on my children, caregivers who accept that wiping the bum of a child is an important responsibility and do it joyfully.”

In the United States Nursing Assistants earn on average an hourly rate of 13.50 dollars, In Ghana, the Labour law states that domestic workers are required to be paid not less than the National Daily Minimum wage which is GHc11. 82

Adwoa says my live-in caregivers are given accommodation, food, use of water, electricity and have other privileges of living in the house with my family in addition to paying them between 400 and 500 cedis a month.

Most people who work as “house helps” in Ghana are given accommodation, food and other basic provisions in addition to their salary, meanwhile a young man who travels to the city to look for a job as an accountant or marketer for instance is not given these privileges.

Employment or the lack of it, remains a huge burden on government, while many says the jobs are non-existent, Adwoa says taking on care giving as a job or a career is a first step to solving some of our unemployment challenges

Caregiving is not a menial job, and for some people their future is caregiving, Adwoa says

 

Saturday, August 7, 2021

Why I would join a “Fix Yourself” demonstration any day

Ghana witnessed a demonstration dubbed “Fix the Country” on the 4th of August, 2021, among other reasons, organizers and people who joined in this demonstration believes that the country lacks effective leadership.

Some said people in political offices have not demonstrated leadership enough, others are against the building of the National Cathedral which has become topical and many said there was hardship.

While I agree partly with the reasons assigned by the organizers of the Fix the Country demonstration, I have, from the first day of the Fix the country, fix yourself, debate, believed that we should be discussing how to fix ourselves as a people.

I believe that when we are able to effectively fix ourselves, it will automatically translate into fixing the country and I will give an explanation into that soon.

Just recently, I witnessed a situation at the 37 Military Hospital that got me traumatized. A single mother of a nine-year-old with cerebral palsy, said her child was having continuous seizures. This child was admitted to the hospital, I happen to visit this mother two times at the hospital.

Every time I visited, the child was having a seizure, the first time I visited was when they were first admitted, the second time was a week after admission.

During my second visit, I met the young man having a serious seizure which resulted in him biting his tongue and blood oozing out of his mouth. I was shaken because, the nurses present seems to be at their wits end.

I spoke with all three nurses present and their response was we are trying to get a doctor to come, I was in the hospital for 20 minutes and even at the time I was leaving, the young man was having the seizure.

I visited this mother because she approached me for help. I run a not-for-profit advocacy organization that supports children with cerebral palsy and their families, while at the hospital, I took a video of the boy having a seizure, my thoughts were to ask for prayer support for this young man since the medics seems to be at their wits end and also to see if through the power of social media, we could link them to a specialist.

The hospital staff on seeing the video on Facebook threatened the mother of the young man to blackmail me to pull the video down with a simple reason that I mentioned the hospital and also mentioned that there was no doctor.

The truth is there was no doctor to attend to the helpless child, whether the “no doctor” was intentional or not, I cannot judge but the attitude of the hospital about the video on social media made me feel something was wrong.

Perhaps, nurses were not doing something right, they didn’t give the care they were suppose to give or something and they were using threats to cover up their wrong attitude. Their wrong attitude which needs fixing.

So, if government fix the healthcare situation in the country by completing the 88 hospitals and the staff in the hospital have an “I don’t care about you attitude” the healthcare situation will still not be fixed.

It is common knowledge that Ghana have some very good laws, but those laws remain on paper, it doesn’t get implemented. The person employed by government to ensure the implementation of the law, perhaps benefits from the law not working and so will ensure that the law does not work.

I appreciate health workers very much for the yeoman’s job they do especially in this Covid era but in a situation where a health care worker looks on for an innocent child to die because they are at their wits end and nothing pushed them to show an iota of care to a suffering child and mother, no, it is a fix yourself situation.

A day after the incident, I woke up and during my morning meditation, I prayed: “Oh God, May I and my family members not be at the mercy of our health care system, May I have enough money to afford healthcare at Euracare or healthcare in a developed country where I believe that the healthcare personnel employed to work there are obliged to show a bit of care about my pain.”

I am of the firm believe that if as many of as possible made a decision to fix ourselves by doing the right thing, doing what we are paid to do, respecting human beings no matter the status or “class” we think they are, it will have done a greater part of fixing the country.

I will not hesitate to join a fix yourself demonstration any day