Physical Therapy and Orthopedic Surgery

Within DRC, children born with physical impairments are often neglected or even forgotten by members of their communities and even families, who are unable to properly care for them. Many of these impairments, for example club foot, are correctable with braces if detected early, while others, such as osteomyelitis often requires surgery. There is often much misinformation within the community regarding diseases such as clubfoot which ultimately prevents people from seeking treatment. Parents might believe that it was caused by misconduct of the mother during pregnancy, a curse, or various other religious explanations. These types of easily-correctable if detected disabilities have been a major focus of the CERBC.

The CERBC aims to support the most disadvantaged families by providing individual support to children for orthopedic surgery and physical therapy in order to give them a chance to be educated for their social and economic integration. Because of this, CERBC established both physical therapy and orthopedic surgery programs in 2015.

In 2016-2017, 737 patients were consulted and treated with physical therapy or orthopedic surgery, of which, 307 were consulted in Aru, and 340 at the mobile clinic.
287 of those consulted were children and young people from 0 to 18 years old.

Of these cases, there were various different pathologies including:
-Hemiplegia (25 cases)
-Cerebal Palsy (34 cases)
-Club Foot (25 cases)
-Varum Knee (27 cases)
-Osteomyelitis (50 cases)
-Peroneal nerve paralysis (2 cases)
-Burn (1 case)