From TCNEWS
Three days after the 2024 World Clubfoot Day celebration, The Straight Child Foundation TSCF in collaboration with Miraclefeet Inc. hosted a capacity building retreat to prepare Clinic Coordinators and clinic assistants for the tasks ahead.
The two-day second edition of the retreat which held in Umuahia, saw the Clinic Coordinators and clinic assistants from the 16 clubfoot clinics spread across the ten (10) states of the federation, where TSCF and Miraclefeet are collaborating to support clubfoot care, in attendance.
One of the major reasons for organizing the 2-day Capacity Building programme amongst others, according to the vision bearer of TSCF, Dr. Mrs Peace Amaraegbulam was for the Clinic Coordinators and clinic assistants to meet physically to discuss the prospect of their tasks, the benefits, the challenges and the way forward.
Pix: Dr. Peace Amaraegbulam (4th from left) with some of the Clinic Coordinators and clinic assistants.
She disclosed the intention of the foundation to further expand the clubfoot awareness campaign, following the successes recorded in the just celebrated World Clubfoot Day, which also saw the management of National Primary Healthcare Development Agency and the Executive Secretaries of States Primary Healthcare Development Agency keyed into the project.
“In the last one year, we went from having some red amongst the indicators, to having an all green set of indicators, which means we have improved in quality across board. We have also done well.
“Also, the clubfoot awareness campaign would be further expanded. There will be more inroads into the different rural communities where the awareness campaign is still very low and access to clubfoot treatment is still very poor”, Dr. Mrs Amaraegbulam stated, even as she disclosed plans of the Foundation to run a stepdown programme, where the key players in the rural communities would be informed of Clubfoot, its early detection, referral and treatment.
She further disclosed the intentions of The Straight Child Foundation to expand its support base, since according to her, TSCF partner, the Miraclefeet Inc. does not support surgeries.
Her words, “We are looking for a wider support so that clubfoot children that needs surgery will have some support for their surgeries”.
Interacting with our correspondent respectively, Dr. Jennifer Onah, Resident in family medicine and TSCF Clinic Coordinator, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, UNN medical centre, Enugu State; and Dr. Odion Oyakhilome, a consultant orthopedic surgeon and also TSCF Clinic Coordinator, University of Benin, Edo State said that the retreat also created an avenue for them to review their Key Performance Indicators, KPI.
According to them, TSCF and Miraclefeet Inc is working relentlessly to ensure that children in Nigeria, who suffers from clubfoot are helped.
Oyakhilome said whereas most parents, guardians and caregivers have difficulties in funding the clubfoot case and whereas the fund for clubfoot, which he described as a simply treatable problem is available, the task before them was to visit immunization centres, also with the help of Disease Surveillance Officers to identify the affected children and bring them to the clinic for treatment.
“We are looking at focusing on the immunization centres, so that we will not miss any baby that has clubfoot. We will reach out maximally to all the immunization centres where babies are brought before they are one year ago.
“All we need to do is to identify them and bring them to the clinic and then we will be able to enlist and enroll many of these children in this program, where they can get free comprehensive treatment for clubfoot”, Oyakhilome further buttressed.