Over 200 clubfooted children successfully treated

The Cameroon Clubfoot Care Projection hashelped to restore 242 children with deformed feet, medically known as clubfoot.

With four specialized clinics; three in the Northwest and one in the Southwest, the project treated the children during the pilot phase from January 2014 to December 2015.

Cameroon Clubfoot Care Projection is a Cameroon Baptist Convention CBC Health Services initiative created in 2014, aimed at providing care treatment to children born with clubfoot deformity. It has now entered the second phase extending its services to the Far North, Centre and Littoral Regions.

“The overall objective of the project is to improve on access to and participation in social inclusion opportunities for children without discrimination. The Cameroon Clubfoot Correction Project CCCP is committed to ensuring that children born with clubfoot as a long disabling condition access quality care and treatment in recognized specialised clinics in Cameroon. We want every child, regardless of tribe to be socially included,” said Jacques Chirac Awa, Project Manager of Cameroon Clubfoot Care.

Awa was presenting the summary of phase II of the project at the conference room of CBC headquarters in Bamenda recently.

Awa said the second phase should emerge with the following results: health institutions have the capacity to provide quality treatment to more children born with clubfoot; more community structures integrate clubfoot activities in their mandates, and ensure that an active national clubfoot network is created to facilitate increase access to quality care.

“It is also expected that government would take greater responsibility in the coordination of clubfoot care and/or management of the project to be strengthened to meet internal and external project requirements.”

He added that in order to attain these results, some of the activities planned for the nextthree years would include; training of Orthopaedic Surgeons involved in the project on clinical treatment of clubfoot, provision of treatment subsidies to very poor families of some children with neglected clubfoot and organise refresher courses for Clinical Physiotherapy, Orthopaedics taff and Brace technicians.

He recalled that during the first phase, the project started with four clinics: Mbingo Baptist Hospital, Banso Baptist Hospital, SAJOCAH Bafut, Mutengene Baptist Hospital.

In the course of the project, partnerships were developed and formalised with three institutions which are now affiliated centres: Presbyterian General Hospital Kumba, St. John of God Hospital Nguti and Associated Rehabilitation Centre for the Handicapped, ARCH, Buea.

Meanwhile, during the two-day workshop organised at the CBC headquarters, Dr. Henry Ndasi, a renowned Surgeon and colleagues drilled participants on the treatment method of clubfoot that laid a lot of emphasis on using the Ponseti Technique (Ponseti was a medical doctor who discovered the easiest means of treating clubfoot in the US and Europe).

Dismissing the belief which some parents hold that children born with clubfoot deformity are a result of witchcraft, Dr. Ndasi appealed to everyone to identify and report cases of children with clubfoot especially at the tender ages between 01-25 years for treatment.

“This project promotes the use of the Ponseti techniques as the gold standard for the treatment of clubfoot. Treatment in children is done by physiotherapy staff and Orthopaedic Surgeons for surgical treatment of neglected cases,” Dr. Ndasi noted.

The Northwest Regional Delegate of Public Health, Dr. Hilda Manjo, said the Ponseti technique is hailed everywhere and called on participants to implement it during treatment.

“I am pleased to announce that CBC has always been partnering with us by involving senior government health officials in major clubfoot training and sensitisation activities,” Dr. Manjo said as a way of thanking CBC and CBM Germany for sponsoring the project. She announced that June 3 is World Clubfoot Day.