Parents, patients, professionals meet to fight disease
Their advance publicity was strong and today Friends of Paediatrics hosted over two hundred people, including parents, patients and professionals, who gathered at the Princess to discuss better ways to deal with some troublesome diseases. Jacqueline Woods has more.
Kera Leslie, Parent
?I want to know how you can take of her you know because you know I am young too and I don?t really understand it. But I try. I just want to get advice and learn how to deal with her.?
Whitfield Dawson, Parent
?I would like to see some help come to Jevon, that he will be able to control himself much better and stop the complication because he travels with a lot of complications sometimes. So I would like to know what they could do to help my little son with those complications.?
Norma Gordon, Parent
?I really would like for the people or anyone who can help him because I don?t know what will be the next problem I would face with him.?
Jacqueline Woods, Reporting
They are parents of children suffering from two medical conditions: spina bifida and hydrocephalus. These health problems are caused mostly due to the lack of folic acids and affect children only at birth, who are then left with a number of complications.
Dr. Egbert Grinage, Paediatrician
?These children have a lot of problem with soiling, with urine and stool as well, large heads, abnormalities of their physique and also having problems walking.?
The problem is that, unlike more developed countries, Belize is not equipped to properly manage the care of these children. It has been both frustrating and depressing for parents like Kera Leslie, Whitfield Dawson and Norma Gordon, whose children are twelve years, five months old and four months old respectively.
Whitfield Dawson
?It was very difficult to provide that care because we have to take him to doctor often to check his kidney and bladder so that those does not get infected. Sometimes he have uncontrollable stool, uncontrollable urine. He sometimes suffers with pain in the stomach and sometimes in the head.?
Kera Leslie
?Right now in her condition one of the shunt she have in her head have an infection. So they have to take the shunt; so right now she have no shun in head. So the thing is getting infected and it has a whole like it is eating her head. It?s very difficult.?
Norma Gordon
?He got sick with the hydrocephalus and so far he has three shunt places already. All three of them are not functioning. The first two got infected and now he is in the hospital waiting for a fourth shunt?
This small scar that lies across the lower back of one year old Gisell Diaz marks the area where she underwent surgery to treat a mild case of spina bifida. Today, Diaz is functioning like any normal toddler and doctors say, the baby=s prognosis is very good. However, patients like thirty nine year old Rosita Cruz never did get to walk. Cruz says because her parents did not want to take the risk of having her undergo any operation, she was never surgically treated for the problem. Today this mother of three children including a set of twins says she has no regrets and has managed to inspire all with her strong will to overcome the challenges.
Rosita Cruz, Patient, Spina Bifida
?Because spina bifida is something that affects your back. You cannot walk but you have your hands to lift up or to move wherever you want. Your hands will give a lot to achieve.?
President of Friends of Paediatrics, Dr. Egbert Grinage says in Belize we need to try prevent this clinical condition before it occurs, but if a child is born with the illness we should treat and manage it properly. Today, a large number of local and foreign medical professionals gathered at a special one-day symposium to come up with a plan of action.
Dr. Egbert Grinage
?We are trying to really give our fellow health care providers and ourselves top of the line teaching from those who know the disease best in the developed countries where they have gone all out for these patients. We then hope to follow their examples so that we can give our patients the best of care and destigmatize this disease.?
Families affected by spina bifida and hydrocephalus also attended to learn more about the conditions and help them cope with the emotional challenges they experience when taking care of their sick child. Jacqueline Woods for News 5.
At the symposium, the participants also discussed instituting a public health prevention plan for women of child bearing age that includes taking folic acids to prevent the occurrence of spina bifida and hydrocephalus. Meanwhile, a team of foreign and local specialists will be seeing patients on Saturday and Sunday at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital.
