New publication urges empathy for epileptics

The work was presented as an eye-opener to communities afflicted with disabilities.

In relative terms, 15 per cent of the world’s six billion population lives with disabilities. Actually, 600 million people on the planet earth suffer restricted capabilities in performing daily life tasks. Among such special need persons are epileptics and the mentally sick who suffer attendant consequences, including poor education, rejection, abandonment, marginalisation, and in worse cases, labelled as witches or wizards. In sum, persons with disabilities are stigmatised.

Quoting the WHO and the World Bank, Fon Asongtia Valentine Foreke, South West Regional Delegate of Social Affairs, rendered the statistics as he addressed a crowd pulling book-launch in Buea recently. Experts in Psychology conclude that even medication without community or family affection is not enough for persons with disabilities.

A category of such stigmatised persons, plagued with epilepsy, was singled out in an acclaimed literary work titled “My Brother’s Journey From Genius To Simpleton,” published by ANUCAM Educational Books in 2014.

In the 126-page book, the author, Marie Angele Abanga, tears down the barriers of taboos and stigma to testify the life of her epileptic brother who lived, schooled and died at 33. The genius in Gabriel Bebongbechem, the character being profiled, led the epilepsy patient to rise to tertiary education, specialising in Computer Sciences after his first seizure in 1993 while in Form Three.

The book-launch was chaired by Julius Tata, representative of the South West Governor, Bernard Okalia Bilai, and Head of Division for Social and Cultural Affairs in the Governor’s office. Hundreds of people who jammed the venue listened cheerfully to a neurologist, Dr. Nkouonlack Cyrille’s presentation on epilepsy.

He explained insistently that the disease is brain-based, but not contagious in any form. The expert chastised the stigmatisation of persons living with that condition, urging family and community care and love for such patients because, as he put it, “They are still very useful to society.”