● Children with cerebral palsy need special attention

Children who have disabilities also deserve an opportunity to go out and experience life like their peers who have no physical challenge, the Acting President of the Hope For Life Foundation, Mr. George Yaw Kyei has said.

According to him some parents have been hiding their physically incapacitated children in their rooms to avoid public ridicule.

Speaking in an interview with The Spectator on Sunday, Mr. Kyei said, “The case is more terrible for chil­dren diagnosed with cerebral palsy. (a condition marked by impaired muscle coordination and or other disabilities typically caused by damage to the brain before or after birth).

He said it was depressing that people called such children “water babies” and other derogatory names hence stigmatising them and embar­rassing their parents.

He said to prevent such situations, some parents and even communities found a crude way to discard them by either drowning them or leaving them in the forests to die after performing some rituals.

Mr. Kyei said his facility which had about 17 branches all over the coun­try had tried to address the situation by providing assistance in various forms to over 100 of such children through various physical and psycho­logical support.

He said “sometimes what some children with disability needed was medical attention to improve their health so the Foundation tried in its small way to uplift the image of their members and give their families hope as it is challenging taking care of such children”.

He said the Foundation was cur­rently in need of a Physiotherapy Cen­tre estimated at Ghc10,000 to offer them mobility assistance and medical interventions of various forms.

The centre had to be suspended because of lack of resources and equipment to run it and called on the public to donate generously to help them make life convenient for their members and their families.

 From Dzifa Tetteh Tay, Tema.