Stakeholders Call For Additional Awareness On Clubfoot Deformity

Stakeholders at a one-day programme in Awka have called for more awareness creation on clubfoot deformity to enable couples who have such children to come for treatment.

Speaking during the event, the Anambra State Commissioner for Health, Dr. Afam Obidike, noted that clubfoot is one of the neglected diseases that confront humanity.

The Commissioner said that the wife of the Anambra State Governor, Mrs. Nonye Soludo is passionate about children with clubfoot and that she is ready to partner the organisers of the event for an increased awareness creation and treatment, asking those working in the Primary Healthcare Centres across the state to identify any child with clubfoot for treatment.

The Executive Secretary, Anambra State Primary Healthcare Development Agency, Pharmacist Chisom Uchem charged the Officers in-charge in the various primary healthcare centres in the state to take the sensitization seriously and always check for clubfoot children in any delivery in their facilities.

Earlier, the Coordinator of Clubfoot Clinic at Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching Hospital, Nnewi, Dr. Anthony Ugezu, who is a Consultant Orthopedic Surgeon, explained that clubfoot is a congenital deformity in the foot that makes the ankle and the foot to bend inwards and noted that the treatment of clubfoot in NAUTH is free of cost, even as he revealed that the prevalent ratio of clubfoot in Anambra is one to one thousand births.

A woman whose child with clubfoot was corrected in NAUTH, Mrs. Cynthia Uchechukwu-Ndive, commended NAUTH for restoring her lost hope and called on other parents with such children to visit NAUTH Nnewi for correction of clubfoot with no cost.

Lectures on clubfoot were also delivered during the event.