Mbaza goes to Katete with GrantMarch 21 - 23, 2007 |
Last year when we visited Sikin Village which is home to our friends Rogers, William Phiri and Gaston, we got to know a little boy called Thomas. Thomas was unusual in that he, unlike all of the other children in the village who laughed and giggled nervously when they saw these two tall, white muzungus, came up to me hand outstretched so that I could walk him through the village with everyone else. Every time we went out to Sikin, Thomas was there ready to take my hand or sit on my lap. What a sweety!! We also got to know of a young boy Mbaza who had, it was thought, polio and whose crutches were far too short. The crutches had been made for him when he was very young, and no one had bothered to extend them or to make him a new pair. I suggested to our friends that a new, longer pair of crutches should be made for the boy so that he wasn't hunched over them the way he was.
This year while talking to our friends from Sikin we discovered that the two boys were brothers, that they had a father with neurofibromatosis, that one other brother had the beginnings of neurofibromatosis on his skin and that a third brother had a paralysed right arm and a slightly short and somewhat dysfunctional right leg. Mbaza with the crippled leg also had a strange growth on his right rib cage. Johnny recognised the condition as neurofibromatosis. I photographed the growths on the boys.
Also while talking to our friends in Sikin Village we discovered that Mbaza was a very clever, able pupil. But not only that - he also had an uncanny ability to motivate and organise his fellow pupils. He was an extraordinary child like his brother Thomas. The problem for Mbaza is that he has to go about 2km on his crutches to get to and from school every day. Since I hadn't yet sponsored anyone in the Luangwa Valley, I decided I would sponsor Mbaza. Obviously he needed a wheelchair so that, like a young disabled girl in the village, he could be pushed to and from school in the wheelchair by his friends or family. Before I bought him a wheelchair, however, I asked Johnny to have a look at him to see if a properly-designed prosthesis might not be a better solution. The next time we went out to Sikin to see our friends Johnny had a proper look.
He didn't have polio at all!!
He had strength and sensation in his foot, but the tibia and fibula had dissolved and the whole leg could be bent at a point about half-way between the knee and the foot.
Johnny suspected this was somehow related to the cutaneous neurofibromatosis of the father and brother as was the growth on his rib cage. So we sent the photos we had taken of the father and his boys to some friends at St Francis Hospital who we had met at Flatdogs last Christmas asking for more information. We found out that a leading orthopaedic specialist Professor John Jellis was coming to St Francis hospital on March 8. Wow! Great! Maybe a bone graft could be taken from Mbaza's hip and inserted into the missing space in the tibia and fibula of Mbaza's leg.
It would also clearly be useful for me to go into Chipata on the way to see about the final shipment of materials for the Clinic, so off we went. William Phiri, the Volunteer Health Worker from Sikin Village and the uncle of Mbaza, came with us.
Professor Jellis examined Mbaza (after an 11 hour wait in and endless queue) and said that Mbaza's condition was another manifestation of Neurofibromatosis. He said that a bone graft would be useless as the grafted-in bone wouldn't grow at the same rate as the rest of the bone and that his affected leg would end up being about 6 inches (15 cm) shorter that the left leg. The only solution was to amputate the leg and fix up a prosthesis to replace the lower part of Mbaza's right leg. He said that Mbaza would then walk without crutches and would be playing football within weeks of the operation.
We made an appointment to come to the Italian Orthopaedic Hospital in Lusaka on Sunday April 22, 2007.
Read about neurofibromatosis (358 Kb)
On 30 March I received an e-mail from Prof. Jellis asking us to move the date back to May 6. Watch this space for more about little Mbaza and his terrible condition.
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