The National Human Right Commission (NHRC), has cautioned against killing of children with special needs as a result of their vulnerability.
The call was made in Abuja at a fund raising ceremony for the care of children of special needs, organised by Seechild care centre.
A Director at the Commission and Legal Practitioner, Aver Gaver said there are laws that protect persons with disability which Nigeria was part of the countries that ractified it at the UN convention, and that the child right act was part of it.
According to Gaver, anyone who kill these children has committed homicide which is an offence before the law, and that there is a section of the law that pronounce purnishment for anyone who committed murder.
Gaver therefore, called for more sensitisation, adding that there are no enough sensitisation about this children especially at the local communities, where she alleged the crimes of killing these children prevalence.
Also, the Assistant Director with the Nigeria Communication Commission (NCC), Solomon Igbayue, particularly called for support in area of funding the care centre to make it 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 added that there was need for the country to have a specialized hospitals for people of these nature, saying 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 realized 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 scounting for these funding by themselves without any support from anywhere, most of these children are on Pampers 24/7, some of them have special medication they take.
“Some of them have nurses who are dedicated to take care of them, they are been paid, the doctors who attend to them are paid, all these required a lot of money,” he stressed.
He also called for a special and dedicated school where these children can learn, adding that, some of them who had gone to coventional schools and become great learn in a hard way.
The board member of the NGO, Mrs Apha Mane-Iber pointed out that most parents of children with this kind of disorder are ashame 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 ministry 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.
The initiator of Seechild Care Centre, Mrs Kawan Aondofa-Anjira, stated that the centre has been in existence since January 2011.
She added that one of the basic challenge of the centre was space to keep the children for physio-therapy as children continue to multiply day by day.
“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.
She decried the rate at which children with special needs are look down, adding that neglection and spirit of not deserving a fly are what people attached to this kind of children.
“Most people in the society do not understand who these children are, they don’t understand their condition, and once a child is not developing as expected it is looked down upon as not a human being.
“My advice to mothers is that every child is a gift from God and every child deserved the right to life, every child should be care for, no one deserves to be look down upon, all children must be trained.
“A child not trained will become a burden, if a child is trained, it becomes useful to him or herself and the society. Cerebral palsy is not curable, it is a long time condition,” she stressed.