The Gender, Children and Social Protection Minister, Cynthia Morrison, has offered to adopt and sponsor the education of the five-year-old boy whose hand was cut by her stepmother and left rotten, to junior high school level.
“For Kofi I’m going to take him as my very own and then put him in school,” she said Sunday when she visited the boy at the Cape Coast Teaching Hospital where he is being treated after the rotten hand was amputated last Wednesday.
The minister who was saddened by Isaac Mensah’s condition and poor family background said she would put Isaac in school and ensure he goes through primary to junior high as a “normal child”.
“I don’t know where we are going to send him to because looking at the grandmother she can’t take care of him, the mother can’t take care of him, and nobody so, I’ll take him up as my own and then make sure he has the best of education,” she assured.
Isaac, who is currently in kindergarten, has said he would want to become a doctor in future, something Mrs Morrison said she would push him to achieve if only he has the IQ to study science.
She observed that typical of children, they usually say so many professions that they would want to pursue, noting in Isaac’s case, when the reality sets in is when they will be able to know if she can really do science.
“He says he wants to be a doctor and so when he starts school [and] we see his IQ whether it is fit for [science]… But if he is good in his math and sciences, i will push him to do the science that he wants to do,” Mrs Morrison told journalists at the hospital.
The minister is considering enrolling Isaac in a school she owns at Agona Swedru that has a boarding facility. She explained she has a home there which will make it easy to monitor his academic progress.
For the minister, he would want to see Isaac grow to become “proper human being” so he could be an advocate for children who have gone through or face similar situations.
Mrs. Morrison indicated that the sponsorship for Isaac’s education will be from her own pocked and her Ministry.
Support
Mrs Morrison commended individuals and organisations who have offered to support the boy and provide him with prosthesis.
Beyond that, she underscored the need to open a child account for Isaac which he can fall on in the future for his tertiary education.
She said she cannot guarantee Isaac’s tertiary education because by that time she would have been old but “for his primary and JHS, it is mine, so i can do that for him”
“I’d make sure we have fixed account for him where nobody will touch that money so that that money will be generated for his future because he can go to my school for free, he gets to secondary school, by god’s grace there is a free SHS, what about the university? And maybe i wouldn’t be there [at that time] to follow up” she noted.
Background
3news.com last Tuesday broke the story of how 22-year-old woman was said to have accidentally inflicted cutlass wound on the left arm of the stepson about a month ago at Ahomfie, a village near Abura Dunkawa and left it untreated.
A week after, the wound started to deteriorate and gradually got out of hand resulting in the decomposition of the arm.The left forearm of the boy was rendered non-functional as doctors said the veins and cells in it had all died.
‘I didn’t intend to harm him’
The stepmother, Efua Abaduwa, told our correspondent Thomas Cann at the hospital last Tuesday that she did not intend to cause injury to the stepson and that what happened was accidental.
She said Isaac Mensah defecated on their compound so she decided to punish him when they went to farm.
“I was then holding a cutlass so I decided to use the side of it to hit him, but he raised his arm to block it and unfortunately the cutlass cut him. We took him to a clinic and he was given injection and medication,” she said.
According to the woman, the man at the clinic who attended to the boy asked they bring him for review every three days for dressing of the wound. She claimed the said man also told her to use warm water to clean the wounds at home.
“When I tried to do it, he poured the water away. I decided to boil water again and I poured some on the wound. I later realised it was swollen but I continued to take him to the man who kept dressing it” she claimed.
Asked what caused the wound to deteriorate, she admitted the hot water she poured on the wound caused it to worsen.
Two men spotted the boy in town at Ahomfi on Monday, January 28 and became alarmed by rotten hand.
Shocked by the boy’s story, the two immediately reported the matter to the District Director of NCCE, Mrs Ellen Osei who also reported same to the police before taking him to the hospital the same day for medical examination.
Stepmother, father remanded
The pregnant woman, Efua Abaduwa, who is nursing a baby was arrested and has remanded into prison custody together with her 36-year-old palm wine tapper husband, David Mensah.
They were arraigned on provisional charges of causing harm and abetment of crime Wednesday before the Abura Dunkwa Magisrate Court.
Their plea was reserved by police prosecutors to allow investigations into the case to be completed. They are expected in court again on February 14.
By Stephen Kwabena Effah|3news.com|Ghana
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