Zipporah Njeri Kariuki, 54, a widow has been through the ringer. Out of the blue her once healthy sons started developing paralysis symptoms including difficulty in walking, and ever since her life changed forever
Zipporah Njeri Kariuki has had a fruitful life; she has seven children, four girls and three sons. However, although her sons were all born normal something went wrong once they entered into their teens. Geoffrey Ng’ang’a, now 34 was born a normal child and grew up just like any other child.
But at age 15 everything changed as he developed difficulty walking. His immediate following brother, Stephen Kinyanjui was also forced to drop out of school in Class Eight after developing the same complication.
The same happened to Njeri’s third-born son, Joseph Njuguna, now aged 27, who, like her first born is completely handicapped. Kinyanjui the middle brother is the only one who can still struggle walk. “Seeing the people you treasure living in agony and not knowing how to help is heart-breaking.
This is the pain I have lived with for the past 15 years,” narrates Njeri, sobbing uncontrollably. “My sons are unable to take care of themselves and so I have been forced to quit subsistence farming which is my sole source of livelihood in order to take care of the three,” she adds.
When she took her sons for screening at a Nakuru hospital, she was told that her son’s had Muscular Dystrophy and that there was no medication that could be provided to treat the condition.
“Since the hospital could not help, I was adviced to join and register with a persons living with disability group in my locality, which I did,” she continues. In July 2014, President Uhuru Kenyatta announced that his government would scale up support to persons with disability.
Since 2009, the National Fund for the Disabled of Kenya has been receiving a grant of Sh100 million from the government annually to help persons with disability countrywide.
She joined the group and her documents were taken with the promise that her sons would become beneficiaries of the monthly cash transfer fund, a promise that has never come to be fulfilled.
“They came and took photographs of my children promising that Sh2,000 would be remitted to the account on a monthly basis per head, but that has remained a dream,” she says. According to Association for Persons with Disability Kenya (APDK) regional coordinator, Geoffrey Kimani, the condition, referred to as Muscular Dystrophy has no cure.
“The condition mainly affects boys and starts from between the age of five and 30, It starts with weakening muscles of the feet and later paralysing the hands and finally the heart. Eventually it leads to death,” continues Kimani.
Also Kimani says the condition can be maintained by taking the victims through lots of exercises, and that the best way to prevent the condition from spreading is by carrying out genetic counselling. “This condition is more of genetic and is passed down from the mother who is a carrier.
It mainly leads to death of male children will females become carriers, but when it goes to the second and third generation, it is mostly likely to disappear. In the region I come from, Nakuru, that encompasses Baringo, Laikipia, Nyandarua, Kericho, Narok and Nakuru counties, have witnessed about 20 of such cases in the past five years.”
Further, Kimani claims that APDK has started an initiative that provides affected parents with genetic counselling in order to avoid extension of the condition to other generations after them. “The cash transfer fund set up by the government for the disabled is not enough to cater for the number of persons with disabilities.
However, APDK normally provides assorted appropriate appliances for persons with disability on a monthly basis, but the demand supersedes the supply owing to high cost of acquiring them,” concludes Kimani.
By Robert Kibet @PeopleDailyKe
