Connacht Tribune
Pakistani clinic for children’s disorders being run from Corrandulla!
Yvonne Frizzell’s eyes light up at the prospect of returning to Pakistan before the month is out.
When the pandemic hit, Yvonne and her husband Jim left their adopted home – where they run a free clinic she founded to help children with disorders such as cerebral palsy and spina bifida.
They spent the lockdown with their son John in Corrandulla, where he is renovating Cregg Mill, an imposing 18th century watermill. Their daughter Louise lives in Salthill.
Yvonne continued to manage the staff of 34 at the clinic remotely from a cottage behind the mill. While it was closed twice due to local restrictions, they kept the orthotic department open to help children whose parents can travel for days to attend.
The London-Irish paediatric physiotherapist first went to Pakistan in the early ’80s on an adventure with her husband, who is a Geordie. He had fallen in love with the subcontinent in South Asia when he was a young engineer.
“My husband had a friend in London who said why don’t you come and have a meal in my mother’s house. He said ‘I’d love to, what night?’. Abdul said, ‘no, not in London. In Bangladesh’. So they bought a car and went over land from London to Bangladesh. My husband is a bit eccentric, he goes wherever the wind blows.”
They spent five years in Peshawar where she began intensively treating a three-year-old boy with cerebral palsy whose family she met while volunteering in a school.
When the family decided to quit Pakistan in 1989 for County Kildare to allow their son and daughter to experience childhood in Europe, Akbar, then aged 7, fell into a deep depression.
“My husband said why doesn’t he come to live with us in Athy. Luckily, we had a big old house. His mum and dad used to come over once a year in the summer and we would bring him back to Pakistan every winter. We got him an Irish passport and we had guardianship of him until he was 21.”
His family then suggested Yvonne return to live again in Pakistan and set up a clinic for children like Akbar. They were wealthy industrialists and wanted to give something back. That was 2005 and since opening the doors, the Akbar Kare Institute has treated 17,000 children with atypical developmental disorders.
“We’re the only ones doing this job – there are over 200 million people in Pakistan. Just 6.4 per cent of these children go to school – 72 per cent of their mothers have no education at all. Every year we’re seeing more and more children – in the three months up to August we’ve seen 670 new families and 840 previous children,” she explains.
“They might travel hours and hours and hours to see us. The majority of them come because of word of mouth. We have an open-door policy, there’s no fee for anything. It really does change lives.”
As well as hosting a school for both parents and children, and treating children with physio and occupational therapy, fitting them for braces and splints, the institute has an appliance workshop where they make wheelchairs and standing frames from recycled material and upholster wheelchairs to make them bearable for children to sit long hours in.
Jim has trained up carpenters to make the equipment after designing several weight-bearing devices to help children walk.
The couple sold their house at the right time during the Celtic Tiger and invested wisely. All their work in Pakistan is voluntary. They stay in a home belonging to Akbar’s family, who have since moved to Islamabad.
Yvonne happily browses pictures of the children whose lives the institute has transformed – children who are doubled over can sit up, others who are confined to the floor find themselves whizzing about on a set of wheels.
She can’t wait to be working among them again.
Significant state investment is required to address ‘shocking’ inequalities that leave cancer patients in the West at greater risk of succumbing to the disease.
A meeting of Regional Health Forum West heard that survival rates for breast, lung and colorectal cancers than the national average, and with the most deprived quintile of the population, the West’s residents faced poorer outcomes from a cancer diagnosis.
For breast cancer patients, the five-year survival rate was 80% in the West versus 85% nationally; for lung cancer patients it was 16.7% in the west against a 19.5% national survival rate; and in the West’s colorectal cancer patients, there was a 62.6% survival rate where the national average was 63.1%.
These startling statistics were provided in answer to a question from Ballinasloe-based Cllr Evelyn Parsons (Ind) who said it was yet another reminder that cancer treatment infrastructure in the West was in dire need of improvement.
“The situation is pretty stark. In the Western Regional Health Forum area, we have the highest incidence of deprivation and the highest health inequalities because of that – we have the highest incidences of cancer nationally because of that,” said Cllr Parsons, who is also a general practitioner.
In details provided by CEO of Saolta Health Care Group, which operates Galway’s hospitals, it was stated that a number of factors were impacting on patient outcomes.
Get the full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune, on sale in shops now, or you can download the digital edition from www.connachttribune.ie. You can also download our Connacht Tribune App from Apple’s App Store or get the Android Version from Google Play.
Galway 3-18
Cork 1-10
NEW setting; new opposition; new challenge. It made no difference to the Galway minor hurlers as they chalked up a remarkable sixth consecutive double digits championship victory at Semple Stadium on Saturday.
The final scoreline in Thurles may have been a little harsh on Cork, but there was no doubting Galway’s overall superiority in setting up only a second-ever All-Ireland showdown against Clare at the same venue on Sunday week.
Having claimed an historic Leinster title the previous weekend, Galway took a while to get going against the Rebels and also endured their first period in a match in which they were heavily outscored, but still the boys in maroon roll on.
Beating a decent Cork outfit by 14 points sums up how formidable Galway are. No team has managed to lay a glove on them so far, and though Clare might ask them questions other challengers haven’t, they are going to have to find significant improvement on their semi-final win over 14-man Kilkenny to pull off a final upset.
Galway just aren’t winning their matches; they are overpowering the teams which have stood in their way. Their level of consistency is admirable for young players starting off on the inter-county journey, while the team’s temperament appears to be bombproof, no matter what is thrown at them.
Having romped through Leinster, Galway should have been a bit rattled by being only level (0-4 each) after 20 minutes and being a little fortunate not to have been behind; or when Cork stormed out of the blocks at the start of the second half by hitting 1-4 to just a solitary point in reply, but there was never any trace of panic in their ranks.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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GARDAÍ and the IFA have issued a joint appeal to all road users to take extra care as the silage season gets under way across the country.
Silage harvesting started in many parts of Galway last week – and over the coming month, the sight of tractors and trailers on rural roads will be getting far more frequent.
Inspector Conor Madden, who is in charge of Galway Roads Policing, told the Farming Tribune that a bit of extra care and common-sense from all road users would go a long way towards preventing serious collisions on roads this summer.
“One thing I would ask farmers and contractors to consider is to try and get more experienced drivers working for them.
“Tractors have got faster and bigger – and they are also towing heavy loads of silage – so care and experience are a great help in terms of accident prevention,” Inspector Madden told the Farming Tribune.
He said that tractor drivers should always be aware of traffic building up behind them and to pull in and let these vehicles pass, where it was safe to do so.
“By the same token, other road users should always exercise extra care; drive that bit slower; and ‘pull in’ that bit more, when meeting tractors and heavy machinery.
“We all want to see everyone enjoying a safe summer on our roads – that extra bit of care, and consideration for other roads users can make a huge difference,” said Conor Madden.
He also advised motorists and tractor drivers to be acutely aware of pedestrians and cyclists on the roads during the summer season when more people would be out walking and cycling on the roads.
The IFA has also joined in on the road safety appeal with Galway IFA Farm Family and Social Affairs Chair Teresa Roche asking all road users to exercise that extra bit of care and caution.
“We are renewing our annual appeal for motorists to be on the look out for tractors, trailers and other agricultural machinery exiting from fields and farmyards,” she said.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
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The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Families queue up for school’s offer of free house
West has lower cancer survival rates than rest
Galway minors continue to lay waste to all opponents
Gardaí and IFA issue a joint appeal on summer road safety
Marathon Man plans to call a halt – but not before he hits 160 races
