Abia State Primary Healthcare Development Agency has taken steps to work with the Straight Child Foundation in the areas of surveillance, creating awareness and referrals regarding the early detection and treatment of clubfoot congenital disorder.
The Executive Secretary, Abia State Primary Healthcare Development Agency Dr. Kalu. U. Kalu discosed this at a training cum discussion forum between health authority secretaries in the seventeen LGAs of the state and team members of The Straight Child Foundation which has in collaboration with MiracleFeet been offering free treatment to children born with clubfoot, as part of activities to mark the year 2024 world clubfoot day held on the June the third.
Dr Kalu lauded the foundation for what it has been doing over the years which has yielded tremendous positive results and encouraged stakeholders at the engagement to take the assignment seriously so that more children could be identified and treated in line with the RunFree 2030 initiative.
In her speech the vision bearer of The Straight Child Foundation, Dr. Peace Amaraegbulam said the essence of the stakeholders’ engagement was to draw templates that could help generate accurate data on clubfoot in Abia, pointing out that being the first state where the treatment of clubfoot began in Nigeria in 2017 and also where National Council on health adopted the Ponseti standard for clubfoot treatment, Abia must also set the pace for other states in Nigeria in this direction.
Dr Amaraegbulam who shared some of the successes stories of the NGO in collaboration with MiracleFeet in the free clubfoot treatment appealed for more actions on the part of government, parents, organizations and the larger society in raising the awareness that Clubfoot is treatable and is free.
Speaking during the training and discussion sessions Mr. Bright Amadi and Dr.Uchenna Oluwatosin who disclosed that untreated clubfoot still remains one of the largest causes if physical disability in the world, further revealed that out of the two hundred new cases discovered globally every year, an estimated ten thousand of the cases are found in Nigeria where over eighty percent of them do not receive proper treatment due to lack of awareness, poverty and negative stereotypes and called for referrals to the sixteen centres or hospitals where they currently run clinics within the south east and south-south states as well as Kogi state.
The event featured, testimony from Mrs. Chinaza Ugwu whose little son was successfully treated of clubfoot, contributions on ways of strengthening surveillance, early detection and referral by some of the health authority secretaries.
