By Chioma Onuegbu, Etoi
Succour came the way of children with disabilities at the Special Education Centre, Etoi community in Uyo local government area of Akwa Ibom State last week when Association of Resident Doctors, University of Uyo, Teaching Hospital, UUTH, took free healthcare services to them.
Speaking with NDV, the President of the Association, Dr Paul Walshak said the school was chosen as part of activities to mark their Annual General Meeting (AGM) because they wanted to add value to the children with special needs, and disabilities.
“We decided to come here through our reach out programme “T-DROP” because these are children with disabilities. Some are deaf and dumb; some are born with congenital disorder. Living with a disability is very challenging in our society.
“We will also select those who have hearing disabilities, take them to the teaching hospital for an audiometric test. Those who will qualify for use of hearing aids we will make arrangement to procure the hearing aids for them. And we identified that there are some unmet needs here especially in the areas of learning materials, medication, feeding and clothing.”
Similarly, Chairman of the AGM planning Committee, Dr Emem Peters, who said they discovered the school in the course of planning the event, disclosed that they were able to embark on the outreach by tasking themselves and supports received from some public-spirited individuals and some government officials.
Peters who is also Senior Registrar Community Health Department UUTH, added: “We plan to be visiting this school periodically because there are so many unmet needs here. And these are children who require special care, so we have to follow them up because we intend to sustain this partnership.”
The principal of the Centre, who is also director Special Education Akwa Ibom State Ministry of Education, Mrs Esther Emmanuel Unung, expressed happiness for the effort, saying it would complement what the state government is doing to ensure the children at the centre get good healthcare services.
“I am thrilled and happy over what has happened today. They came here a week ago to see what they can do to help the children and today they came in reality. We have over 150 children who live on the premises, and there is no week that I don’t go to the hospital because of them. Those that are epileptic, we always resuscitate them because we have a school doctor, nurses. Some have appendicitis, some hernia, and malaria. In a day about 10, 15 of the children can have malaria.
“And what we discovered is that their parents don’t really look after them because they think they don’t have any future. They don’t give them drugs, when they come to school, they fall sick. So we take them to the hospital many times ourselves through state government help.
So I have reason to be delighted today and my heart is full of joy to see the resident doctors come to administer drugs to these children and diagnose some ailments that they have,” she said.