Osire Isaac: a light to hopeless children

By Frederick Womakuyu
 Little Alistera Alowo lay in pain on her bed, a mat spread on the earthen floor covered by a mosquito net that protected her open wound on the head from the marauding flies.

Blood oozed from the wound as flesh also fell from her head. Set in an isolated hut with an open roof to allow in fresh air, a despicable stench fills the room.

She looks tired, restless and hungry. Her wound is dirty, her family had been using  motor vehicle oil to treat the it, since they escaped from Mbale Hospital six months ago over unpaid bills.

Unable to afford the cost of medical care, the family dumped Alistera in an isolated hut, treating her with herbs and oil in the hope that the 9-year-old girl will recover.

Alistera has had to lose some body parts. Three quarters of her head is rotting and the entire outer skin has fallen off exposing her skull. Her ear was eaten off by an infection and it was buried the day I visited.
Despicable situation
I visited Alistera recently ather home in Paya sub-county in Tororo district, courtesy of Dr. Isaac Osire, an ordinary but exceptional Ugandan, who has devoted his time and personal resources to help disabled children whose
families cannot afford the cost of medical care. Using his own money,the Alistera’s condition, none of them was willing to offer their vehicle to transport her.

A man with a big heart for the disadvantaged children, the 28-year-old doctor did not give up easily.

One evening, while Alistera’s situation was getting out of hand, Osire approached Alex Oboth, a stranger, who had a Toyota Caldina car to help him transport Alistera to a hospital. Oboth says he could not believe his eyes when he saw Alistera. “A stench filled the air. I felt like fl eeing but I requested them to dress her well so that my vehicle wouldn’t smell. I also openedthe car windows.”
Afterwards, Oboth could not eat anything. “I could not sleep or eat. I kept wondering why God would be so cruel,”
he said. Tororo Hospital failed to help the girl, so they referred her to Mulago Hospital. Osire requested the hospital to give him an ambulance but there was no fuel, so they requested him to buy over 84 litres of fuel. 

He did not have cash so he went around seeking for help from friends. Osire found a Good Samaritan who offered to transport the girl. Using the little cash he was left with on his account, he transported Alistera to Comprehensive Rehabilitation Services in Uganda (CORSU)
Hospital for people with disability in Kisubi on Entebbe Road.
At CORSU, Osire is paying for Alistera’s treatment and hopes the facility performs surgery to fi x her head.
A heart for children Osire is not helping only one child. In Mbula sub-county Tororo district, nine-year-old
Vincent Oketch was born a normal child but two years down the road, Oketch’s buttocks and feet started
swelling.

“At first, doctors thought it was elephantiasis. However, further examination ruled out
elephantiasis and termed it abnormal growth,” says his mother, 37-year-old Budesta
Achieng of Makeke village, he pays for their treatment, providing them with transport, food, clothing and sometimes
a home.

One evening in September 2011, Alistera was a normal beautiful girl, playful and school-going, when she had an argument with her mother. Being close to her grandmother, she fled from the mother to her.
“She found me roasting maize outside my house. I had some visitors inside the house, so I requested her to roast the
maize as I took some ready cobs for the visitors,” Mary Apoya, explained with tear falling from her eyes.

Apoya did not known that her granddaughter, Alistera, was epileptic. While she was
away, Alistera got a seizure and fell into the fire without anybody noticing. Terrified, Apoya screamed for
help, attracting the villagers and her mother.

The mother, Christine Athieno, says the father rushed to the nearest shopand bought car oil for first aid. However, Alistera’s condition worsened, her flesh fell off as her wound started to rot and smell. She was taken to the nearest health centre, Paya, but the health workers referred them to Butaleja Hospital.

“However, Butaleja Hospital could not help, so they referred us to Mbale Regional Referral Hospital. We stayed there for about two months but her condition was not improving,” adds Athieno.

At Mbale Hospital, Athieno claims they were charged a lot of money. The bill accumulated to over sh400,000 yet they could not see any progress in Alistera’s
condition.

Martin Obbo, Alistera’s father, was requested by the health workers to either clear the debt or their child would not be treated any more. Obbo hit the road with the hope of finding the money. After failing to find it, Obbo sneaked into the facility and stole his daughter and took her home, with the hope of finding money to take her to another facility.

Isolated in a lonely hut

However, a month down the road, Obbo could not raise the money. He resigned to fate and started treating his child with car oil and a concoction of local herbs. The family put her in a hut that nobody else enters.

Her condition worsened and the local community got to know about it. Two weeks ago, while Osire was on a
routine field visit to Paya subcounty,he heard of the untold suffering of the little girl.

“I visited her but it was horrifying. Her head lay split open as flies competed to feast on her. Her flesh was peeling off as blood oozed from her brow, sending me into tears,” he said. Osire wanted to transport the girl immediately to hospital but he did not have appropriate means of transport since he had ridden a motorcycle that day. He was afraid that dust would enter the wound and re-infect it.

Since Osire has no personal vehicle, he requested his friends’ to help him with their cars. But when he narrated

When, where it all started

Dr. Osire reveals that he was inspired to work with disabled children because one day while he was in the community, and he saw a child with hydrocephalus, a preventive and treatable disorder disowned.

“His father could not stand the shield. He had a swollen head and huge hole on the buttocks. He was smelly and the father looked for a way of killing him. When I saw this, I took on the child,” he explains.

Osire took the child for treatment and he recovered. Today, Moses Ogen is eight years old.
In another bizarre incident, he saw a child who was born without feet and hands. The father of the child ed from the mother.

Dr. Osire started assisting the woman.
“I constructed a house for her.When the father saw that, he came back.

They accepted him back and he has also accepted the child. These are some of the cases that inspired me to help these children,” Osire said.

He, however, has inadequate resources and requests donors to come to his aid.