An estimated 2.6m Eastern Cape children live in a deadly environment shot through with live electrical cables, shack fires, burning candles and paraffin stoves during load-shedding and boiling kettles and pots going off in cramped, rickety spaces.
Many suffer horrific burns and arrive at the Frere and Cecilia Makiwane hospitals’ paediatric surgery unit severely hurt, starving, confused and frightened.
Paediatrician surgeons estimate that 60 children a year in East London, Mdantsane and surrounding rural areas are severely burnt by live electrical wires.
But this is the province where good things happen too, and there is hope for these impoverished children, says Prof Milind Chitnis, head of paediatric surgery at both hospitals.
Child surgeons are not standing back in the face of slowing service delivery. They have metaphorically and literally jumped on their bicycles and have gone out there to raise support for the children.
In 2009, then-young surgeon Dirk von Delft cycled to Cape Town to raise money for the paediatric surgery movement. Prof Colin Lazarus, a cyclist, saw a chance to raise funds with epic rides.
They started the Eyabantwana for the Children Trust and have raised a humble but incredibly useful R2.9m over the years.
Lazarus, 80, is still on the long road. He is leading (from the rear) a13-strong peloton of Grandad’s Army cyclists on the second Eyabantwana Trust for the Child Heritage ride. Eight will ride the entire 1,500km, Lazarus one them.
Each has raised R5,000 to R10,000 for the trust and they will pay their own way on the 13-day cycle home from the northern border of SA, reaching Old Selbornian Club in East London on Sunday, November 12.
These city athletes, mostly in their 60s and 70s, but include some young paediatric surgeon athletes, have come to understand and love the work of the trust.
The money they and others in the community, including a number of committed East London businesses, have raised has gone to plug the gap created by the slowing pulse of service delivery.
That help has incredible range, from toys and books which open the children’s eyes — “Are those for me to use?” is the common expression — to space-age tools for paediatric surgery.
One of these gleaming instruments is the Brenner 4.5" skin graft mesher (stretcher) with a 2:1 ratio which the trust bought for Chitnis and his 13-strong medical team for R133,263 from a supplier in St Paul, capital of Minnesota, US.
The trust also bought a lithium ion battery-operated Humeca D42 dermatome costing R250,000.
The money was donated by Rotary Club of Gately in East London. It has an extremely small head that allows precision cutting in paediatric surgery which cuts skin to a thickness from 0.02mm to 1.2mm. The width of the graft can be up to 42mm.
Lazarus said this precision had revolutionised skin grafts from days when surgeons would take strips with a blade.
Every year, the paediatric surgery team operates on 1,100 children, and more than 300 are burn victims, of which about 200 have suffered major burns.
Chitnis said: “We are blessed to have these state-of-the-art tools.”
He explained that 95% of the province’s 2.9m children under the age of 16 lived in poor areas and 90% depended on government grants.
“Many of our adults look for better opportunities in other provinces, but the children are left with the grandparents. So our province is full of children.
“We need to look after our children because they are the present and the future of our country.”
He said burn victims needed to be admitted and receive special care.
“Many need high care and or ICU management, multiple operations and a lot of rehabilitation.
“Burns are unfortunately very common in our country because of the socioeconomic situation.
“There is extreme poverty, informal settlements, illegal connections, very small single-room homes where a lot of family members live together.
“The children are there where everything is easily accessible and are exposed to a lot of burn injuries.
“When live wires are left on the ground and children don’t know that it’s live. They touch it or they accidentally walk over it.
“Electrical burns are notorious because you may only see the entry wound and the exit wound, which are usually quite small.
“But the entire electrical current causes a lot of destruction in the child’s body, including affecting the functioning of the heart.
“And that is why each electrical burn needs an admission, careful observation, multiple blood tests, even ECGs. And they need intensive management.
“And some of them have extensive necrosis, death of tissue in the body, which might need multiple surgeries.
“A child can die easily from an electrical burn.”
He explained other common burns:
- Hot water burns: Kettles should never be kept on a table, but they are because of a lack of space. The child pulls the cord and the kettle spills.
- Basins or buckets are first filled with hot water when the cold should go in first: The child does not know that and jumps in and receives major burns over the body;
- Cooking oil on a low stove: The child pulls the pan of boiling oil over.
- Shack fires: A lack of electricity means open flame lights, such as candles. People fall asleep with their candles burning. Then clothing catches fire.
- Winter fires outside: People toss on canisters which contain inflammable contents. Or someone pours on kerosene “and then they just catch fire”. Fire burns are deep and damaging.
Support the ride and the trust. Donate to Eyabantwana for the Children Trust, Nedbank, Beacon Bay, current account 1138181366 or give at www.givengain.com-eyabantwana.
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