Helping Children with Disabilities

5 May 2009

Helping Children with Disabilities

The Ameera Association

Rafah, Gaza

Suhair holds her young sons close as they both wriggle in her arms. 'My two boys cannot walk alone, and they both have problems speaking', she says. 'It is a difficult situation.'

Six year old Sharif and his five year old brother Ahmed both have cerebral palsy. The brothers need 24 hour care, including intensive physiotherapy to maximise their movement and help them remain as physically able as possible. Suhair lives with her husband and nine children in an impoverished area of Rafah city, in the southern Gaza Strip. Until April last year, Suhair was struggling to cope with her sons' complex needs, but now she has found support through an innovative local association that teaches physiotherapy skills to mothers of disabled children in Rafah so they in turn can support their own children.

The Ameera Association was set up by a local woman from Rafah, Akhlam Ferwinaa,' in response to the needs of her own physically disabled daughter. Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) has been supporting the Ameera Association since 2008. The association is one of MAP's sixteen local health partners in Gaza, and with the support of MAP, Akhlam and her team are now training 240 mothers of disabled children in Rafah to administer daily physiotherapy to their children.

'This project is vital because instead of working short-term with the children, we are giving long-term support to their mothers who learn how to support their own children', says Akhlam. 'We have a lot of mothers on the waiting list to join our project. We did not expect such demand for our service - but 30 percent of the women who join us have more than one disabled child at home, and they really need this support.'

Suhair and her sons joined the Ameera Association physiotherapy project last year, and attend physiotherapy training sessions twice a week, plus speech therapy sessions. One of the association project workers also visits them at home on a regular basis for additional support. 'I can now do all the physiotherapy for my two boys myself', says Suhair. 'We also learn other practical skills - how to take our children to the toilet, and new ways to play with them.' She says both her sons are now more physically mobile, and that attending speech therapy sessions has made a huge difference to their communication skills. 'Ahmed only used to say 'Baba' ('Daddy') but I've learnt to encourage them to repeat words after me - and now he says everything!'

There is no official figure of how many people in Gaza are physically disabled, though one estimate puts the figure at approximately ten percent of the population, or around 150,000 adults and children. Israel's recent military offensive in Gaza killed approximately 1,400 Palestinians and injured more than 5,300 others, some of whom were maimed for life. Specialist services, including physiotherapy units, are struggling to cope.

Whilst Israel maintains its blockade and closure of the Gaza Strip, resources for disabled children like Sharif and Ahmed continue to be absolutely minimal, which places more strain on their families. For Suhair, one of the most important things about the Ameera Association project is the social support she receives both from the workers and other local mothers who have disabled children. 'It is really good to exchange experiences with other mothers like me' she says. 'We have taken our children out together to the beach, and I'm not shy to take my boys out now. We've been going to the Ameera Association for a year, and it has made a real difference to all three of us.'