Deaf choir visits Dainfern for Casual Day celebrations

They may not be able to hear, but the deaf community should absolutely be heard.

On 6 September, the Mediwell Centre and Dainfern Square Shopping Centre played host to a very special awareness campaign for people with disabilities for Casual Day.

The Mediwell Care Foundation invited deaf children from the Filadelfia Secondary School Hearing Eyes Choir to the centre to perform in sign language in the celebration of the deaf community along with other special guest speakers.

“We decided to celebrate deaf people this year,” explained Sister Prudence Lekgwara, a nurse at the Mediwell Clinic at Dainfern Square. “In 2012, the president [of South Africa at the time, Jacob Zuma] said that sign language would become South Africa’s 12th official language. But up until now, the deaf community has been left behind.

“We as a health care facility really want to bridge the communication gap in healthcare so that deaf people have access to care.”

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Making sure that deaf people were able to live a life of dignity and respect was the overarching theme of the day. Guest speakers included Thuli Thamene, mother to a deaf son named Boikanyo, who spoke about her experiences as a parent to someone with special needs and what we can do to make sure the disabled are safe and heard in our society.

A second guest speaker was Sandhya Singh, the director of non-communicable diseases for the National Department of Health who attended the event on behalf of her division’s director-general.

Singh was impressed with the partnership between the Mediwell Cares Foundation and the shopping centre in hosting the event and agreed that more needs to be done to support the disabled. “We acknowledge the many struggles that deaf people face including educational, social and the ability to access health care,” she told the Fourways Review. “The department launched the Cheka Impil Project [which aims to promote wellness on a national level and get more people on treatment for Aids, tuberculosis, diabetes and other non-communicable diseases] a few months ago, and we’re really working towards making that project more accessible to the disabled.

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“We want people to have the best possible experience at health facilities, and that includes providing translation services for the deaf.”

The event was a celebration of the deaf community. The Hearing Eye Choir from Filadelfia, which is a school in Soshanguve that provides education to 495 children who are deaf, visually impaired or have another disability, performed military drills before singing the national anthem and three gospel songs in sign language.

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The event was ended on a happy note when Lekgwara also announced that Mediwell will soon offer sign language classes to the public.