Leader and Founder of the Unity Party, Femi Claudius Cole has started her oral health campaign with the distribution of toothbrushes and toothpaste to Children 5-12 years.
As part of her ‘Thank you’ tour, after the March 2018, elections, Femi Cole had earlier promised members of her constituency around the Country that, whether she wins the Presidency or not, her free medical outreach to vulnerable communities will continue, together with her new oral health campaign for children.
Questioned on why oral health, she said “As a professional health worker, during my campaign tours apart from the many preventable illnesses my team had to deal with, we found out that majority of the children age 5 to12 experience serious tooth decay, as a result of plaque, which means they hardly scrub their teeth. When I asked a parent, she simply replied that we don’t have enough to eat, let alone by a toothbrush. We use chew sticks to brush our teeth, when the children are older they learn how to use chew sticks for cleaning”.
Madam Cole added that she was shocked by the parent’s reply, noting that for a thousand Leones a parent can by a toothbrush to save a child from oral health misery.
Oral hygiene is a major health issue world over, and has become a priority along with malaria, also a major killer of children and adults, mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa. Despite a lot has been done to reduce high incidence of malaria in endemic countries, Sierra Leone is still among to have the highest malaria mortality rate. Femi Cole said it is still unclear how far the malaria control programme has gone from addressing malaria, and as she puts it, “When you come to the deepest parts of rural communities, the difference is not visible, because there is still increase reported cases of malaria”. 400 children and severely sick adults, in communities at the newly created, Kamasondo Chiefdom, Port Loko District, benefited from the exercise where the former Presidential hopeful also distributed 300 toothbrushes and toothpaste to children age 5 to 12, to kick-start her oral health campaign.
She explained that, “This campaign seeks to distribute one million toothbrushes around the country to save innocent children from tooth decay and plaque, and hopefully when the one million toothbrush distribution is achieved, together with my outreach team we’ll try to extend the intervention”.
The Unity Party, medical outreach while in Port Loko used rapid malaria antigen test kit or rapid immunochromatographic test for the qualitative detection of antigen of Malaria to diagnose and provide anti-malaria and other medications. A nurse from the team assured that the test kit is an effective equipment that allows for malaria tests to be done within few minutes. Majority of the children treated had malaria and fever, with other conditions, including coughing, congested chest, pneumonia and skin diseases, like ringworm and scabies. Access to safe clean water for bathing is partly responsible for the increase in skin diseases.
4-year-old Emma Conteh has been suffering from asthma, but the parents did not know that their little angel was asthmatic, but thanks to the team, young Emma was treated and is now on medication. Hernia and cleft cases were also identified, and free surgery has been booked on a later date, in Freetown.
Mohamed Kamara a party activist, was grateful for the gesture noting that, Madam Cole made a promise and she has lived up to her words, giving selfless service to save the lives of many. He added that most politicians in Africa, Sierra Leone being no exception only come when the need arise, and that is during elections to vote them in, but soon elections are over, they disappear into thin air. “Madam Cole genuinely is committed to her nursing career, which is to save humanity”. The outreach team will continue in other parts of the country, including Kono, Bombali, Kambia, Kenema, and Kailahun in the coming months.
By Ade Campbell
Wednesday July 25, 2018.
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