Cape Town - An basketball player and ballroom dancer has spoken of how much easier it is to move around after the donation of a specialised and custom-made wheelchair from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Babalo Pholose, 39, from Site C Khayelitsha, has been wheelchair bound since 2000 due to spinal tuberculosis.
He is among the recipients of a new wheelchair after the Western Cape Health Department received a donation of 900 wheelchairs from the church, informally referred to as the Mormon Church, during an official handover at the Western Cape Rehabilitation Centre in Lentegeur on Monday.
In addition, the department was also set to receive 1 200 mobility devices – including crutches, quad canes, walkers and commodes, as well as eight wheelchair repair workshops, with work benches, tools and spare parts – to the value of R5.4 million, to be supplied over the next 18 months.
Pholose said the new wheelchair had improved his life.
“The wheelchair that I was using was one of those big wheelchairs; I needed a wheelchair that would make it easy for me to move around, because (the old one), it was not easy even to push it,” he said.
“A wheelchair makes your life very easy. If I didn’t have a wheelchair, I would be sleeping because I couldn’t move around.”
Emergency and Clinical Services Support chief director Juanita Arendse said the donations started on February 21, when 35 rural occupational health therapists and physiotherapists attended a basic wheelchair seating refresher course offered by the church.
Health Department head Dr Keith Cloete said: “What I’m really excited about, and it’s something that really warms my heart, and that is in terms of what it is we’re putting on the table – it is the best of what we can do in terms of assisted devices, in terms of helping people with disabilities (who are) the greatest in need and have the least access to the ability to get those resources.”
Church member and volunteer humanitarian missionary, Sister Theresa Niss, said five different types of wheelchairs are offered, and interviews and assessments are held with patients to equip them with the most suitable one.
“We’ve said to them (the department), and they understand, that this is not just a once-off donation, this is something that we’re going to grow with them as they get capacity.”
