Taal made this revelation as he received a donation of hospital equipment, pediatric physiotherapy equipment, mobility items, wheelchairs and ancillary supplies worth, 35 million dalasi donated by Affecting Real Change, Legs For Africa and PhysioNet charity organisations.
He declared: “The donated items will help the beneficiaries to go about their normal lives and as the director of Social Welfare rightly said, we have recently seen a rise in the number of amputees in the country due to accidents and non-communicable diseases such as diabetes. This has become a huge burden on this country. We will assure you that the equipment that you donated will be given to the beneficiaries directly and we also implore you to do more because this is what we always ask for. The government cannot do it all.
“I am very happy to be here to receive these valuable items from Affecting Real Change, Leg For Africa and PhysioNet charity organiations. We cannot really emphasise how grateful the Ministry of Health is for this donation. The donated items are very important because all beneficiaries who are here to gain from it wouldn’t have otherwise had any other source.”
Fanta Bai Secka, the director of Social Welfare, also expressed concern over the “rising number of disabilities” in the country saying her institution is “inundated with lots of demands from members of the disability community especially for the production of artificial limbs”
She praised Affecting Real Change, Leg For Africa and PhysioNet for coming to their aid, adding that there is already a high number of disabled people “who are waiting” to receive the donated items.
“As we speak, there are a lot of clients who are already waiting to receive some of these equipment. That shows the high need and demand. There is also a real concern on the increase of persons with disability in this country. Today we are most grateful for these materials that are being donated to our department because they come at a time when the demands for their needs are high and I assure the donors of the limbs and other equipment, Affecting Real Change, Leg For Africa and PhysioNet, that they will be put to good use,” she enunciated.
Speaking on behalf of the donor charity organisations, Musa Saidy, founder and secretary general of Affecting Real Change, said his organisaton was committed to contributing to the enhancement of the welfare of the disabled in the country.
He also applaud the significant roles that Leg For Africa and PhysioNet played in the purchase and shipping of the donated items to the country.
“We have been working in The Gambia since 2002 with the Ministry of Education and in 2013 we started working with the Ministry of Health. This is not the first container that we shipped to The Gambia. In 2013 we shipped a forty-foot container to The Gambia worth over ten million dalasi and today the donated items here are in a forty-foot container which is worth 35 million dalasi and it is all free for the people of The Gambia. My charity (Affecting Real Change) works with other charity organisations in the UK such as PhysioNet that supports the disabled and Legs For Africa which has also contributed immensely to the shipping of this container and they put eight hundred artificial legs in the container. We are very grateful for the government and the people of The Gambia for allowing us to operate as a charity. We are also working on plans to build health centres in The Gambia as we did in India,” he said.
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