Govt Urged to Make Special Provision for Children with Cerebral Palsy

Peter Uzoho

The Founder of Cerebral Palsy Centre, Surulere, Lagos, Mrs. NonyeNweke, has called on the government to make special provisions to cater for children living with cerebral palsy, a psycho-physical deformity caused by damage in the brain.

Speaking in Lagos recently, during a walk tagged ‘Living BeyondLimitation’ which was intended to help create more awareness on the sickness, Nweke said the Nigerian government had not done anything to help in managing cases of CP in the country, pointing that a lot of parents have their children diagnosed with CP but don’t know where to go to for information and counseling.

She said government should have a provision for not just children with disabilities but for organisations such as Cerebral Palsy Centres that are managing children with the ailment.

“Right now we are looking at having our permanent site. We are praying for the government to give us land so we can build a place that the children can have enough space,” she noted.

She enjoined parents, neighbours, religious bodies and the larger society to stop all forms of discrimination against children and adults having cerebral palsy, noting that they should understand that having a child with such disability did not mean that they were hated by God for giving them such children.

Nweke revealed that she established the centre about seven years ago because of her daughter who has cerebral palsy, having gone to severalplaces looking for where to manage the health of her child. “With me in that condition of not finding what I was looking for, I decided to use my effort to create one,” she said.

On his part, President, Association for Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities of Nigeria, Mr. Segun Joseph, while lamenting government’s non seriousness towards the issue, noted that “It’s very surprising that when government is talking about people with disability they only talk about children with physical disability; the blind and the deaf.”