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Saturday, December 31, 2005
2 more toddlers get support from German karate studes
A LITTLE help goes a long way.
The young, grateful parents of Alteyah Nievera, a month-old baby girl recuperating in a hospital in Baguio City, know this only too well but will have wait until she's old enough to understand so they can tell her.
For her benefactors, however, her knowing where help came from is and will be of no moment. What matters to them is that she will be released soon, fully recover, and grow up like any other normal kid.
Alteyah, the first and only child of a couple from Barangay Irisan, recently pulled through surgery for hydrocephalus.
Neurosurgeon Jesus Nigos and his assistant, Dr. Joey Ancheta, performed the operation to drain extra fluids that enlarged the baby's skull.
Help came just in time, from halfway across the world. Karate students in Germany pooled over P20,000 which they asked their teacher to allocate for the most needy among children at the pediatric ward of the Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center (BGHMC).
"What's important for them (his students) is being able to help," said Julian Chees, a fourth-dan karate blackbelt and head of over 50 traditional karate schools in Southern Germany.
Chees, an Igorot from Maligcong, Bontoc, Mountain Province, is here to retrace his roots and pay his respects to his former teachers - Sensei Kunio Sasaki and Sensei Edgar Kapawen of the Japan Karate Association -- one of the largest traditional schools in the world.
Last year, Chees's students led by first-dan blackbelt Renate Doth raised some P70,000 which he delivered to help two families bury two children and rebuild their common house destroyed by a landslide above the Banaue Rice Terraces in Ifugao.
Alteyah was the fifth recipient this year of support from the Shoshin Kinderhelp, the social arm of the Shoshin (The Beginners Mind) martial arts school Chees founded after he retired as member of the German national karate team.
"She will be discharged from the hospital soon," assured Dr. Ferdinand Ganggangan of the medical center's pediatrician ward and under-five clinic.
The sixth beneficiary was Manuel Tagulino, a 15-year-old orphaned and autistic boy who is also suffering from epilepsy and progressive mental retardation. The support will enable him to undergo further medical laboratory tests.
Manuel and her widowed mother Corazon had been sleeping on the pavement beside the Rizal Monument for five years. Local Samaritans pooled their resources the other year and built a room for them in Barangay Irisan.
Chees earlier bought medicines worth some P16,000 to complete the treatment course of four other baby patients at the BGHMC - Earldesten Medrano, Sharmaine Langawen, Dianne Kay Pilagan and Abegail Binwag.
The four babies, aged two to six months old, were all diagnosed with sepsis, with some also suffering from pneumonia, malnutrition or urinary tract infection. Their parents could not afford the medical costs, as found out by Ganggangan who saw lapses in their prescribed medicine dosages.
"Their irregular intake renders ineffective the dosages earlier taken," the doctor explained to Chees.
Ganggangan told Chees that the hospital could not provide all the medicines given its limited budget and the big number of charity cases it handles. (RD)
(December 31, 2005 issue)
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