Runs away from their disabled children

The father did not want to know about his disabled child and left. The mother refuses to give up little Joseph who she gave birth to when she was 16 years old. Help from Adina is crucial.

TEXT AND PHOTO: MAGNE REIGSTAD

 

One day a week, Gloria - one of our physiotherapists, travels to Oguro, a good half hour drive from our center in Lira. The pickup is loaded with various remedies needed for training and examinations. The Adina Foundation borrows a small office for free in a large regional clinic. The management knows that people in the areas around the clinic are poor in lye and can not pay for either treatment or a trip to Lira.

Little Joseph (2) is today's first patient. The mother is quite good at following the training program that Gloria has set up. The physiotherapist sees significant progress when she bends the child's arms and legs. Joseph stretches when his mother rattles with an abacus, and he closes his eyes when Gloria snaps her fingers. Uplifting!
Out in the narrow corridor, accompanying mothers and grandmothers with children are waiting, some in colorful dresses, others in sandals so worn that the heel is gone. The next patient at Gloria is an angry four-year-old who is going to build muscle so the girl can stand on her own two feet. The girl just crawled around the village for the first few years of her life. The mother left, but the grandmother has taken action.

Gloria fastens her in a kind of standing chair and this triggers howling protests. Grandma looks apologetically at us. Gloria monitors the reactions and believes it should be possible to rebuild the muscles as long as the injuries are not too extensive. The recipe for success is patience and professionally arranged training.

The clinic in Oguro is located in the middle of an area where the LRA and Joseph Kony ravaged the worst until the civil war ended around 2006. In recent years, many young people with HIV infection have come to the hospital's special department, but local health authorities say fewer are infected. In the corridors hang posters that tell how both singles and married people can live well with HIV.

 

Gloria meets many kinds of expectations and a good deal of skepticism when she tells her parents what is wrong and what should be done with a disabled child. She must first convince the parents that the disabled child is not the work of the witches, and then the villagers must be convinced that an operation or systematic training can give the child completeness.

It can be just as challenging with parents who almost expect immediate results, and if the changes do not come quickly enough, it can happen that the parents drop out in the middle of the program. - This is a match with many fronts and no quick victories for anyone, says Gloria.