Although Babatunde Fashola, affectionately known as Baba, is 22 years old, he is less than 70cm (2ft 4in) tall. He has cerebral palsy and requires lifelong care. He can neither speak nor walk and is fed via a tube attached to his stomach.
As a baby, he was abandoned by his parents but 10 years ago, he found a home at the Cerebral Palsy Centre in the Nigerian city of Lagos.
“Baba weighs about 12kg [26lb]. He is doing well,” the facility’s founder, Nonye Nweke, tells me when I visit.
Ms Nweke and her staff work around the clock to support him and other youngsters living with permanent brain damage.
Although there is a lack of official data, cerebral palsy is believed to be one of the most common neurological disorders in Nigeria. In 2017, a medical professor from the University of Lagos said 700,000 people had the condition.
For many of those living with cerebral palsy in the country, their condition was caused by a common phenomenon among newborns – neonatal jaundice.
This is caused by a build-up of bilirubin, a yellow substance, in the blood, meaning the babies’ skins have a yellow tinge.
Professor Chinyere Ezeaka, a paediatrician at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, tells the BBC that more than 60% of all babies suffer from jaundice.
Most babies recover within days. More severe cases need further medical intervention – and even then the condition is easily treatable.
Children are basically exposed to ultra-violet light to dissolve the excess bilirubin in their red blood cells. The treatment lasts a few days depending on the severity.
However, in Nigeria this treatment is often not immediately available, which is why the country is among the five with the most neurological disorders caused by untreated jaundice in the world, according to data from the World Health Organization (WHO).
Any treatment for neonatal jaundice “must occur within the first 10 days of life, else [the condition] could cause permanent brain damage and severe cerebral palsy”, says Prof Ezeaka.
To make matters worse, the West African country lacks facilities to care for those with neurological disorders. There are just three cerebral palsy centres, all privately run, in Nigeria, which has a population of more than 200 million.
…and so on.
Source link
