‘Report all cases of abuse to the Child Protection Unit’
The Head of the Child Protection Unit of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital (KBTH), Dr Ebenezer V. Badoe, has stated that children who have been abused can come straight to the unit for treatment without any referrals.
Advertisement
He pointed out that parents of abused children who report at the KBTH can go directly to the unit after their folders have been prepared because there are trained personnel, who are specialised specifically to attend to victims of child abuse.
Dr Badoe, who is also a Paediatric Consultant at the Child Health Department, in an interview with the Junior Graphic, health personnel in other hospitals are also being trained to attend to such cases.
He said the unit had treated over 500 cases of child abuse from serious to mild cases since the unit was set up eight years ago.
The cases, he said, included defilement, abusive head trauma, fractured bones, among others. He, however, added that most of the cases referred to the centre were mainly allegedly sexual abuse related.
Dr Badoe, said some of the cases that were brought to the Unit were very severe and cited an instance where a teenage girl, who was defiled, developed fistula, and had to undergo surgery on four different occasions to enable her to live a normal life.
“The family did not have money and you could see that the girl was suffering and needed urgent medical attention. I had to beg the surgeons to operate on the girl while I looked for money to pay later,” he added.
Dr Badoe said child abuse cases were complex issues which could not be treated like other ailments or infections which were usually recorded at the out-patient departments of hospitals.
He said health personnel have to acquire the needed training in order to determine, for instance, that a case related to burns was related to child abuse or not, by conducting further investigations into the matter to be able to bring the perpetrators to book.
Dr Badoe said some sexual abuse cases among pre-adolescent children as well as adolescents which should be reported at the centre were usually referred to the Department of Gynaecology for treatment and asked health personnel in that department to always refer such cases to the unit to be addressed holistically.
He said the number of cases involving males that had been reported at the centre was significant, and encouraged boys also to report any form of abuse whenever it occurred.
Dr Badoe said the tendency for boys to keep mute over abuse was more likely to be overlooked and, therefore, asked parents to monitor their children closely to find out if they were exhibiting any form of abnormal behaviour which needed to be investigated.
