Most children with cerebral palsy need wheelchairs for mobility, but only a few can afford it in Nigeria. To fill that lacuna, Kingsley Okukpon Albert, a self-trained the technician, is fabricating wheelchairs locally and making them affordable for low-income earners, reports Vanessa Obioha
The COVID-19 pandemic came with a lot of uncertainties and hardships last year. One of such was the scarcity of wheelchairs for children with cerebral palsy (CP). The congenital disorder of movement, muscle tone or posture usually caused by an abnormal brain development often before birth affects about 700,000 Nigerians according to The Provost, College of Medicine, University of Lagos, Prof. Afolabi Lesi, in a 2017 report.
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The World Health Organisation also posits that over one billion people live with some form of disability in the world and the percentage is higher in developing countries.
Depending on the severity of the movement disorder, most cerebral palsy children need wheelchairs for mobility. But only a few can afford it in Nigeria. A cerebral wheelchair can cost as high as N2.2 million or N4.5 million, revealed Bukola Ayinde, an advocate for inclusive education for cerebral palsy children.
Struggles of Parents
For low-income households, carrying the child on the back is the available option. Ayinde is familiar with the struggles parents go through conveying their children to health centres for physiotherapy. She disclosed that most mothers who live in the outskirts of Lagos have to walk long distances, carrying their children on their backs to visit public health centres. This, she said, often results in backaches.
Blessing Kingsley, a parent of a child with cerebral palsy recounted the challenges of conveying her daughter from one place to another.
“If we have to go to Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) for her treatment, we will have to leave as early as 6 am. Sometimes, we don’t get home till late at night.”
Even before the pandemic kicked in, CP wheelchairs were scarce as most of them were imported. Ayinde revealed that between 2019 and 2020, the scarcity of CP wheelchairs was very high. Therefore, as countries began to shut their borders, ground international flights and halt production, parents of children with CP were deeply affected.