Athlete raises awareness about clubfoot treatment

Although he was born with clubfoot, South African sprint and long jump athlete Mpumelelo Mhlongo has looked at the brighter side and credits his condition, saying it afforded the opportunity to be world champion. 

In partnership with non-profit organisation Steps Clubfoot Care, the 29-year-old is adamant to raise awareness that every child who is born with clubfoot receives the treatment within the first month of birth. 

Mhlongo said his own journey to being a recovered clubfoot was often spent in hospital corridors for long hours, with several foot surgeries and in doctors’ consultation rooms. He turned what many believed was a disability that will hold him back into winning silver and bronze at the 2019 World Para Athletics Championships.

“What gave me comfort is that I could trust the foot that everyone called a ‘disabled foot that will hold me back’ because it is the reason I can say I am a world champion who has visited more than 50 countries. The very same thing that was expected to hold me back has allowed me to spread my wings and fly as far as I have.

“I must give credit to my parents, back in the day it was from one specialist to the next all over KwaZulu-Natal. I was scared. I have brief memories of me in hospital hallways for hours on end trying to get the right help. My mother was told that I needed to get through seven types of surgeries and that they needed to amputate my foot. We couldn’t blame medical people because it was a rare condition back in the day, the knowledge of what to do was very limited,” he recalled.

Now an ambassador of the #StepItUp campaign, an initiative by the Steps Clubfoot Care, Mhlongo would like to cast the net wider to let parents who have children born with this condition know that their experience with clubfoot can be smoother than his own.  

“I was interested in the fact that Steps uses a non-invasive and non-surgical method to assist. My main role is to spread awareness so that more people are aware that there is treatment from all corners of SA. We are trying to raise R1m to cure 400 kids to prevent permanent disability in someone’s life. This is the reason I became one of the ambassadors for this project.  

“The more mobile you are, the more value you find in yourself because we don’t live on a continent of absolute facilities or have infrastructure that caters for people living with disabilities. 

“We would like the people who are financially able to donate to help the cause in providing them with proper treatment. There are over 11,000 people born with clubfoot in Southern Africa every year. As a nation, we can be the change we want to see,” said Mhlongo.

Steps Clubfoot Care founder Karen Moss, whom her 20-year-old son, Alex,  was born with clubfoot, said she had to seek assistance overseas when no one had answers in SA. She said her story as a parent inspired her to found Steps.

She and her team have already built 39 clubfoot clinics since its inception in 2006 and has trained 49 health professionals, her organisation has also built a network of doctors in public hospitals to ensure these children get the life-changing operation.

“There was a doctor who had been treating clubfoot for many years in a hospital based in America, an  orthopaedic specialist, Ignacio Ponseti. He tried a method that was not invasive known as the Ponseti Method. It didn’t require major surgery and was very effective. I took Alex to America to be treated. At the time Ponseti was 89-years old.

“Clubfoot is turned over, pointed inwards and downwards and it’s in a rigid position. You can’t push it back into the normal position of a foot. It should be picked in the maternity ward from a child’s birth. No one picked it up for me, I had to find information on the internet. 

“I thought to myself, why the Ponseti Method could not be done in SA. My son had been ignored by doctors for so many years. He told me that as a mother with a child with clubfoot, I had to go back and convince the doctors in our country because this is the best way to treat it. That is how it started. My own experience had been so different.”

Now doctors as far as Upington, Pietermaritzburg and uMtata, clubfoot clinics and a network of medical teams are always on standby to treat patients, whether their parents are employed or not.

“I want every child to get treated no matter if they are in a far away village in the Eastern Cape. Our goal is to have no children affected by this. Even if the parents are, so that they can walk to school without being isolated, which is exactly what happens.”

All that the #StepItUp challenge requests is for one to donate as little as R10. Donors can donate more should they wish to do so. What makes the campaign fun is that the theme song is an original amapiano soundtrack titled I Am Possible, produced by Dino Moran, Bee Deejay and DJ Schuster. 

“We have decided to use Mpumelelo Mhlongo and Musa Motha, who helped in the choreography, as our champions because they can dance. The song is available on download, that will be how people can donate. We decided to go with this kind of campaign because it is engaging. We had the idea and we started speaking to the creators. They said amapiano is the way to go because the genre is popular on Tik Tok and is known all over the world.”

ratsatsik@sowetan.co.za