On the road again....... Road???

In June we went to visit Grace at home, Grace was one of the children who came every two weeks for our outpatients help. We give porridge flour, sugar and soap or when they are very small, milk money. These are children who have a mother, grandmother or aunt who cares for them. They don't need to be taken into Amecet, but we help them with some nutritional supplements. And we weigh them when they come to see if they do well. We had missed Grace for some weeks and we saw in our records that had not done so well. So we went to see her at home. Grace is 2,5 years old, but her weight was 5 kg. She is small and she can't sit, talk  and hardly reacts on people. The grandmother cares for her, since the mother had gone away. She was malnourished. Together with the grandmother we agreed that we would take her to Amecet to treat the malnutrition and to asses her condition. Out of the story of the grandmother, we think that Grace had cerebral malaria. She could only drink, so we gave her special milk and after some time we tried porridge. We also took her to the Physiotherapy in Soroti hospital and they showed us what kind of exercises we could do with her. Grace hated the exercises, but we saw she became less stiff and we also saw a change in her emotions. She reacted on us, she could smile and we put her in a small chair to sit for some time. She got several problems, malaria, she had tremors, we took her for those also to the doctor, but the medicines didn't make a difference. We started her on mashed food, which she likes, but you need to be very patient when you feed her. then we decided to try to get her a special chair and with the help of the Physiotherapy, they made  a chair for her.. 

Yesterday we brought her home to her grandmother, with the chair!! She has gained 2 kg, is responding more, she likes to sit in the chair and she can eat mashed food. We would have loved to help her more, like standing  or talking, but this is all we could do..