We need qualified specialists in Fiji to deal with cerebral palsy issues – Early Childhood Intervention School teacher

Calls for help have been made for qualified specialists to come on board and help solve the issues of cerebral palsy diagnosis in Fiji.

While speaking on the topic of cerebral palsy during fijivillage Straight Talk with Vijay Narayan, Early Childhood Intervention Centre teacher Nina Silatolu says in Fiji, the diagnosis is done at the CWM Hospital and it is called the development clinic but we do not really have a specialist in Fiji to deal with this issue.

Silatolu says these Special Schools will refer to and follow whatever the paediatrician has provided in the medical report from the hospital and sometimes when these students come into the classroom, she would then notice that the child can be diagnosed with another category of Cerebral Palsy that is not mentioned in the medical report provided.

She says from then on, she usually does her own assessment and determines which category a child falls into.

Silatolu says there are currently 159 cases of Cerebral Palsy in Fiji, according to the data she managed to get from Frank Hilton Organisations.

Josephine Sereikadavu, who is a mother of a child diagnosed with this cerebral palsy says she took her daughter to the hospital after noticing that she had a slow process in trying to gain movement while growing up.

Sereikadavu says she was freaked out because her other children were not like that as they started gaining movement at the right time while growing up.

Sereikadavu says when she took her daughter for a check-up, the doctors informed her about her daughter’s diagnosis and they had to explain it to her in detail as she had no idea what cerebral palsy meant.

Sereikadavu says there is a need for a qualified specialist to deal with this issue in Fiji to help heal children like her daughter.