Polio champion pleads for caregiver empowerment » Capital News

NAIROBI, Kenya, October 24 – As a passionate advocate for caregivers and parents of children affected by polio in Machakos County, Awena Mwikali Mohammed’s journey has been deeply personal.

Diagnosed with polio as a child, her world changed just as she began to take her first steps.

The disease attacked her lower limbs, leaving her mother wondering if she had missed the critical window for her primary vaccination. Polio is a highly contagious but vaccine-preventable disease that most often affects children under five and over 35.

However, his parents refused to let shame overshadow their lives. Her mother and father discussed her condition openly with colleagues and received life-changing advice: take Awena to the hospital for immediate care.

“I was fortunate that my father had health insurance and made sure I received the medical care I needed,” Awena i recalls. With proper treatment, including surgery and physiotherapy, she regained mobility using elbow crutches. Today, she continues to advocate for others, sharing her story to inspire hope and action.

Awena, always smiling, says her mother always supported her by helping her go to school and encouraging her to study, which made her feel sorry for herself and join the ‘business that I am, an educated and educated woman that she has become.

She says her mother received insults from her extended family and neighbors when they discovered her only daughter had been paralyzed by polio, especially when she asked one of them to watch her or help her go to school.

Her mother would be forced to carry her back to school until she could comfortably use tiny elbow crutches and walk on her own.

“If my mother wasn’t strong, I probably wouldn’t have done well in school, but because she believed in me, I was able to study at university to prove to my neighbors that my mother never wasted her time educating. a “cripple,” as I was often called,” she said.

Working at the Kenya Physically Handicapped Association office in Machakos County opened up the opportunity to sensitize women with polio-affected children not to hide them but to take them to school and to request medical interventions.

In countries like Kenya, volunteer community mobilizers such as Awena have successfully gained the trust of parents by regularly engaging with families and communities to raise awareness about the safety and effectiveness of the polio vaccine .

One way she advocates for empowerment is by asking them to form support groups where they can educate each other and come up with ideas that can benefit them economically.

She also helped parents and guardians register their children with the National Council for Persons with Disabilities so that they could benefit like other vulnerable people.

“When a mother is autonomous, the child draws strength from her. They will not feel sorry for themselves or feel like a burden to their family. When parents are happy or sad, their children can feel it,” she adds.

Awena is speaking following the ongoing polio campaign in all nine counties following a recent outbreak, with five confirmed cases in Garissa refugee camps, Turkana, Nairobi and Mbale counties in Uganda.

According to UNICEF Kenya health specialist in charge of immunization, Dr. Collins Tabu, polio is the main cause of paralysis. It is on the verge of eradication and since 1988, the number of children affected by polio has decreased by more than 99 percent.

“This has only been made possible through decades of concerted effort, primarily through vaccination. To eliminate polio, every child in every household must be vaccinated,” he says.

He says the decline in vaccination coverage globally has helped combat polio epidemics.

According to him, the current outbreak in Kenya is due to several factors, including the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to a decline in vaccination coverage, climate change, drought and floods, and the displacement of thousands of people. ‘children.

Additionally, he says population movements from long-running conflicts in Somalia and South Sudan and congestion in camps have also increased the risk.

According to UNICEF, the vaccination campaigns target the nine counties with 3.8 million children identified as high risk: Kiambu, Nairobi, Kajiado and Machakos, Garissa, Trans Nzoia, Turkana, Busia and West Pokot with two rounds of vaccination.

Dr. Tabu said UNICEF Kenya is committed to providing all vaccines for use, supplies and associated logistics, including handling, distribution and disposal, as well as supporting a trust and acceptance community attitudes towards vaccines and to combat misinformation.

According to the World Health Organization, in 2023, Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia and other African countries experienced polio outbreaks even after Africa was declared polio-free in 2020.

Kenya has successfully conducted three rounds of polio vaccination campaigns in ten counties.

WHO says it will continue to support the Ministry of Health in strengthening routine immunization, cross-border coordination, high-quality supplementary immunization campaigns and surveillance systems.

Harold Kipchumba, the National Polio Ambassador, has called on all parents and guardians of children under the age of five to ensure they receive their polio vaccine and save their children from disability or even death. dead if they are not well managed.

Rotary International has worked to eradicate polio for more than 35 years. As a founding partner of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, Rotary International has reduced polio cases by 99.9 percent since the first childhood immunization project in the Philippines in 1979.

According to Past Polio Plus President of District 9212, Dr. David Githanga, Rotarians participated in vaccination exercises by discussing with communities the importance of vaccines.

“You wouldn’t want to advocate painkillers over vaccines, because if someone is in pain you’ll take a painkiller, but for vaccination the biggest challenge is convincing a person of a disease that is anticipated, especially where she is suffering. I don’t see the consequences,” says Dr Githanga.

He says Rotary has played an important role in assuring communities that the vaccines are safe and in raising funds for the vaccination exercise.

Rotary members have contributed approximately $2.1 billion and countless volunteer hours to protect nearly 3 billion children in 122 countries from polio.

According to Rotary, if eradication efforts stopped today, within ten years polio could paralyze up to 200,000 children each year.

The average cost to fully protect a child against polio is $3. In 2017, 430 million children were vaccinated in 39 countries and $100 million was used to monitor polio worldwide.