LITTLE Maradona Mundyoli needs urgent help to alleviate the suffering he has been going through as a result of his bulging belly.
The two-year-old toddler has a distended tummy, which has been swelling by the day, and there doesn’t seem to be an immediate solution to his suffering.
What is worrying is the misunderstanding between medical personnel at the University Teaching Hospital (UTH) and the boy’s relatives.
The family has been defying professional medical advice and have preferred to take the boy to a traditional healer who has, however, done nothing to mitigate his plight.
He was admitted to UTH for some months and later discharged at the insistence of the family.
Instead of taking him for more examinations for the experts to establish what his problem really is, they chose to take him to the herbalist who, as usual, claimed to have the cure for the ailment.
This standoff is unnecessary. It is just putting the life of poor Maradona in more danger.
His grandfather, Most Hachaamba, says the boy’s tummy has continued to grow despite the traditional medication he has been receiving for a month and some weeks now.
It is clear that the concoctions the herbalist has been plying the child with have had no effect on his problem.
The boy needs evidence-based treatment that is guided by scientific as well as clinical diagnoses.
It is unfortunate that the little boy has to go through this suffering.
Surely, there must be an answer to his condition, and it can only be provided by science, not divination.
Mr Hachaamba says Maradona has even stopped walking because of the size of the belly, which is growing bigger each day.
He said his grandchild spends most of the time seated as he could not manage to get up and play properly with his friends.
But the Sun’s further investigations have revealed that he can no longer even sit because of the size of the belly.
The boy has to lie on either his right or left side as a result of the ballooning belly.
According to Mr Hachaamba the traditional healer who had offered to help the child asked the family members if he could be given one more week before they could take him back to the clinic.
The healer allegedly boasted that he wanted try the new powerful traditional medicine he had recently discovered.
Such a serious condition should not be subjected to trial and error or guess work because each day that passes adds more misery to the boy who is unable to play with other children as a normal child does.
The child’s grandfather promised to take him back to the hospital after the traditional healer had failed.
That is dangerous.
This case should be treated with the urgency it deserves so that young Maradona can lead a normal life again as soon as possible.
We feel for the little boy, who does not have the capacity to speak for himself.
Those who are close to Mr Hachaamba should prevail upon him and other members of the family to understand that the more they keep that poor child at the traditional healer’s place the worse his condition is getting.
What is even more worrying is the fact that the child has not been showing any signs that he is in pain.
Two things could be possible: either there is no pain at all or the nervous system could be malfunctioning and is impairing the brain’s capacity to communicate the pain.
But whatever the case the boy needs urgent help, and that help can only be available at a modern hospital, not in a witchdoctor’s shack.