by Rubia Mediatrix – GLO OT
The World is undergoing tough times and everyone in one way or the other has been forced to change certain aspects of their life. At GLO, a lot has changed drastically due to the Covid 19 but we are grateful we are adjusting well to the new routine. It took us some time to figure out how best we could resume offering therapy services to the under privileged special needs children from the community within Kilifi South after closing temporarily on 21st March 2020 as we could not risk the virus coming into the orphanage. We have three children who are in the extremely vulnerable category due to their underlying medical conditions so they had to be our No1 priority.

After consultation with different experts and our trustees, we eventually decided to resume offering therapy services though had to make major changes. We had to come up with a temporary therapy room far from the orphanage. We modified one of the classrooms at SBM School to serve this purpose. I communicated with our clients on phone about our re-opening and I got both positive and negative responses. The clients started reporting on 3rd of August. We have now introduced special social distancing & strict hygiene guidelines for anyone attending the clinic.

The close down due to the Covid 19 pandemic made our clients not to attend therapy and this sadly has really affected their progress in terms of milestones. Most of them have regressed and some have formed contractures and stiffness on joints. Also some have weight loss due to poor dieting and they have become so weak. The parents say that it is hard to feed the whole family during this pandemic as they don’t have any stable source of income making it hard to provide the essential diet to the child who requires special care and meals.

On home program, some of the parents admitted that it was not easy for them to follow and do it as they were afraid of causing more harm to the children rather than improving their progress but I am pleased at least they trained on sitting, standing and walking. Also almost all of our clients are experiencing financial crisis hence they can’t afford transport to the centre making the turnout to be low ever since we re-opened but they are also respectful as they always communicate when they fail to get transport.

After speaking to Mama Mary about the problem she has managed to receive a donation which is helping towards the transport costs of the most needy children and also we will provide a meal for the carer ad child when they attend the clinic as many are so hungry, this pandemic has made the poorer suffer even more than before here in Kilifi South.

Delrosa & I are very grateful to our supporters for enabling us to resume offering these essential services, we are positive that with time the children will show improvement and achieve the important growth and development milestones.

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