KENYA— The Wezesha Watoto Clinic, a specialized childhood disability clinic for children, has been announced to be established at the Moi Teaching Referral Hospital (MTRH) in Eldoret, Kenya.
The clinic will be established by mid-next year in a national effort to address the gap in taking care of children with special needs by offering them advanced treatment in Western Kenya.
The Wezesha Watoto Clinic will be offering a diagnosis of disabilities with a focus on neurocognitive assessment, neurophysiology assessment, occupational therapy, and treatment.
The clinic will adopt the public hospital rates and incorporate the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) to rally with the private facilities that offer the services but at higher prices.
The clinic will also act as a centre for excellence in training and innovation through upskilling of healthcare workers to enable them to provide care and research in children with disabilities.
It will as well provide rehabilitation facilities to the patients.
Mark Nyalumbe, the chairperson for the Kenya Medical Psychology Association, says the clinic will also serve as a referral facility to low-income populations who are always left with the choice of expensive private hospitals.
In Kenya, there are several exclusive children’s hospitals while others are departments in a big hospital that serves both children and adults.
They include among others Gertrude’s Children’s Hospital, MP-Shah Hospital, and the Karen Hospital which are charging as high as over US$30 for consultation only.
Dr. Nyalumbe notes, “The neurodevelopment clinic will be more of a pediatric looking at children with different developmental disorders, especially around the brain neurons.”
The facility, he says will help increase treatment by providing additional clinical space and staffing to transition from being a weekly clinic to a daily clinic to meet the needs of children with disabilities.
Dr. Nyalumbe said the development is coming at an appropriate time considering the long waiting list for children and families to be seen by healthcare workers at the outpatient pediatric neurology clinic in western Kenya.
“The outpatient pediatric clinic is usually open just one day a week because the limited number of healthcare workers are overburdened with service at hospitals. Diagnosis and treatment for children can be difficult,” said Dr Nyalumbe.
Dr Nyalumbe says the facility has adapted all the equipment that will enable them to offer care that is culturally sensitive, and appropriate to the Kenyan population.
With the opening of the clinic, parents with children living with different disabilities will have hopes of raising their children knowing that care options exist.
Tackling childhood disability in Kenya
The initiative comes at a time childhood disability is becoming a burden in the country in Kenya and affecting millions of children around the world.
According to the Ministry of Health, the prevalence of childhood disability in children aged 3 to 21 years in Kenya is 13.1%.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that 1.3 billion people which translates to 16% of the global population experience a significant disability today.
Apart from experiencing language, speech, motor skills, behavior memory, and learning, children with neurodevelopmental disorders face additional stigma, isolation, and even neglect.
UNICEF notes with disappointment that around the world, children with disabilities face significant barriers in accessing care, including stigma, lack of financial resources, inaccessible facilities, lack of transportation, an absence of privacy at care facilities, and inadequately trained healthcare staff.
African Studies Center Leiden, Disability in Africa notes that estimating the extent of disability among communities is a herculean task and it is estimated that there are about 80 million people living with disability in Africa.
Additionally, out of this number, 10%−15% are children of school age, and causes of disability among children and adolescents include epilepsy, cerebral palsy, poliomyelitis, tetanus, cerebrospinal meningitis, malaria, and limb amputation.
In Africa, the commonest cause of disability is infection, followed by trauma due to accidents or war, congenital and non-infectious diseases such as epilepsy, poor quality of perinatal care, malnutrition, and chronic medical conditions such as diabetes and HIV/AIDS.
Frontiers in public health contend that establishing childhood disability clinics in Africa may help prevent or reduce the incidence or prevalence of disability among children.
Interestingly, establishing the clinics could be possible since there are already existing postnatal and children’s clinics in most health facilities.
However, this requires a shared commitment of all the stakeholders, and capacity building of all the stakeholders involved with the clinics is very important.
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