News : Snozelen at Society for the Severely Mentally Handicapped Selangor and Federal Territtory

Excerpt from STAR ONLINE

Kids benefit from charity draw
By BAVANI M

FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD Tan Ji Teck's angelic face lit up with a smile that would have melted the hardest of hearts as he touched the cushioned walls blinking with pretty little lights.

The darkened room, which had a cosy feel to it, had glowing fibre optic strands and was filled with soothing coloured lights, while music played and a fragrance pervaded the room.

It was his favourite time hanging out in the Snoezelen therapy room at the Society for the Severely Mentally Handicapped Selangor and Federal Territory in Petaling Jaya.
Costing RM50,000, the Snoezelen room helps stimulate the senses of the home's special children.

Tan (right) and Adam Firdaus, seven, hanging out in the snoezelen room of the Society for the Severely Mentally Handicapped Selangor and Federal Territtory.Tan suffers from Cornelia De Lange Syndrome, a growth defect.

Although he is 15, he looks more like a five-year-old child.
The centre's head teacher, M. Mangamah, said the room gives the kids the ability to experience the five senses – sight, touch, smell, taste, and hearing.

“Children lacking certain senses, are encouraged to play with equipment that helps stimulate those senses,” she said.

The Snozelen room helps stimulate the senses of the children.“The room certainly has a calming effect on them each time they come here.”

About 13 special children suffering from various mental disorders such as Cornelia De Lange Syndrome, cerebral palsy, Down Syndrome and epilepsy come here on a daily basis to learn to be independent.

“They come here totally dependent on everyone and we try to teach them to become as independent as possible,” Mangamah said.

“Ji Teck, for instance, is able to communicate with us and tell us if he wants to go to the bathroom and he can easily recognise people,” she added.

A similar Snoezelen therapy room has been set up at Bethany Home in Taiping, Perak.
The Ronald McDonald Children’s Charities Fund of Malaysia (RMCC) set up both facilities; the one at Bethany Home cost about RM100,000.

“The facility has done wonders to benefit the severely handicapped members of the home,” RMCC president Fadillah Yakin said.

The funds for the second room, at Bethany Home, came from the Malaysian Charity Draw I held last year, Fadillah Yakin said, adding that without the funds it would not have been possible.

“We received RM250,000 from the last charity draw and, of that, RM100,000 went towards setting up the Snoezelen room in Bethany Home, while the balance was channelled to the Give a Gift of Smile campaign, which aids children born with cleft lip and palate undergo corrective surgery that helps them lead a normal life,” said Fadillah.

According to Fadillah, through this campaign, RMCC had helped restore the smiles of 60 children from all over Malaysia since 2003.

“Cleft lip and palate is the fourth most common birth defect, and is the most common facial defect in the world.

“In Malaysia, it is estimated that 600 babies of the total average of 570,000 born every year are born with this defect.

To date, there are almost 12,000 babies born with cleft lip and palate. These children need surgery as without it, the defects affect their appearance, speech and dental condition.

For details on the centre, call 03-7874 6703.

[tags : seic epilepsy seizures children pediatric neurology]

News : Meningitis can cause cerebral palsy or epilepsy

Excerpt from STAR ONLINE

A shot for protection

DON’T say children don’t know how to share. Why, they share all sorts of things! Sometimes it’s their toys, their food, but most often, they share the microscopic organisms that live on and inside them.

Lice, for instance. You know how it is – one child has kutu and all the other kids in the class go home scratching.

Or the common cold virus, which is why your child sometimes develops a sniffle after coming home from kindergarten.

Daycare centres, kindergartens and schools are hotbeds for infectious diseases like cold, sore throat, chickenpox and hand-foot-and-mouth (HFM) disease because children are in such close contact all day long.

There is now a conjugate vaccine that can prevent pneumococcal bacterial infection in infants and children up to nine years old.And unlike adults, a child’s immune system is more vulnerable to being invaded by disease-causing bacteria and viruses.

Most of the time, the illnesses that spread are harmless. Plus, you can rest assured that if your child has been vaccinated following the National Immunisation Schedule, he is already protected against many common infectious childhood diseases like rubella, mumps, measles and whooping cough.

Unfortunately, emergencies can happen when you least expect it, as in the case of seven-year-old Thomas Lee. What started out as a normal fever one day turned into a full-blown emergency case of pneumococcal pneumonia.

It was two weeks of agony for little Thomas and his parents who had to watch helplessly as their son succumbed to a frightening disease that did not respond to antibiotics.
Seen under a microscope, the pneumococcus or Streptococcus pneumoniae bacterium looks deceptively pretty, like a strand of pearls, or a string of beads. But don’t be fooled, it’s nastier than it looks.

Pneumococcus causes a group of illnesses called pneumococcal disease, with the scariest ones being the invasive infections. These include bacteremia (infection of the blood), meningitis (infection of the membranes covering the brain or spinal cord), sepsis (an infection in the blood associated with shock and organ failure) and pneumonia (infection of the lungs).
Pneumococcus is the most common cause of meningitis in Malaysia, replacing Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), for which children are now vaccinated against.

Meningitis is dangerous because the lining of the brain becomes inflamed, and this can cause death or, for those who survive, multiple neurological problems like mental retardation, cerebral palsy, blindness, deafness or epilepsy.

Pneumonia can be near fatal as well. In our country, it is one of the common illnesses that causes childhood hospitalisation and death.

Pneumococcus also causes non-invasive diseases, including otitis media (middle-ear infection) and sinusitis.

These diseases are dangerous, too; a child with middle-ear infection may develop complications like hearing loss, learning disabilities and delays in speech development.
The impact of the pneumococcus bacterium is devastating: each year, more than one million children throughout the world die as a result of pneumococcal disease.
If antibiotics are the marvel that scientific discovery produced to fight bacteria, why didn’t it cure Thomas’ pneumonia?

Many years ago, it might have. But Thomas was probably infected by a strain of pneumococcus that has recently become resistant to penicillin and other antibiotics. This is happening in many countries around the world, including Malaysia, due to the overuse and misuse of antibiotics
Children infected with antibiotic-resistant strains of the bacteria may have prolonged illness because they do not respond to formerly effective drugs. Their disease may spread more rapidly, unless treated with expensive alternative antibiotics.
Clearly, antibiotics are not the answer.

So how do you protect your child from something that spreads through a simple cough, a sneeze, or by the touch of a hand?

Through vaccination, that’s how. And fortunately for parents in Malaysia, there is now a conjugate vaccine that can prevent pneumococcal bacterial infection in infants and children up to nine years old.

The vaccine provides protection against 60%-80% of pneumococcal infections. It is safe, but may sometimes cause some mild reactions like local irritation and fever. Some children may experience other temporary side effects like irritability, drowsiness, restless sleep, decreased appetite, vomiting and diarrhoea.

Although Thomas did not receive the vaccination, he recovered from the infection with no ill effects.

His mother, having gone through the trying ordeal, now advises parents to have their children, especially the very young ones, vaccinated against pneumococcal infection.

“A child cannot live in isolation, and you never know when the infection will strike, and whether you will be as lucky as Thomas to survive unscathed,” she says.

– Article courtesy of the Malaysian Paediatric Association

[tags : seic epilepsy seizures children pediatric neurology]