More than 180 cases of child abuse have already been treated at the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital this year – the bulk of which has been due to physical abuse and neglect.
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As part of International Child Protection Day, the Cape Town hospital held a briefing on cases that it regularly deals with, and what its staff does to help children, News24 reports.
Dr Rowan Dunkley, of the hospital’s child protection team, says that protecting children goes beyond just identifying child abuse; adding that the hospital saw 183 cases of abuse against children since the start of the year. Of the 183, 69 cases were identified as due to physical abuse and 50 of neglect.
Dunkley shared a case study of a nine-year-old boy, who had been punished with a clothes iron. Although his burns were treated in two weeks, he was kept in the hospital for another 10 weeks while social workers and healthcare practitioners worked to find him safe accommodation. ‘Providing care to abused and neglected children required extensive partnerships between different departments in the hospital, and social workers, police, and schools,’ he says.
Commenting on the increase in cases of gunshot wounds, chief executive Anita Parbhoo says things have changed over the past few years. ‘We’ve started to see a totally different pattern. It used to be that children were caught in the crossfire during shootings. But over the past few years, victims are becoming older and are often gang members themselves. It’s really troubling’
Western Cape Health MEC Nomafrench Mbombo says children are very much impacted by violence between adults. ‘The issue of children dying from stray bullets and crime is still happening. When adults are killing each other, there is an impact on children. We can do as much as we can, but it’s happening in the community.’
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