Warm blanket is the best medicine for a cough

Elvis Iteriteka is a four-year-old boy living at Nyarurambi hill, Cankuzo, the eastern province of Burundi.

He has suffered for a long time with a cough. His mother, a 20-year-old divorced woman, had no means to take care for him alone. His cough was treated at hospital for more than six months with little improvement. An effective medicine revealed itself to be a blanket.

 “Whose blankets are those?” Elvis asked his mother from her back, after she received two blankets from World Vision Burundi.

“They are ours,” she answered to her son, looking at him and laughing. “I am very happy tonight; these blankets come as an answer to my son’s disease. Elvis suffers from cough six months ago,” Valerie Nibitanga says.

“I went many times to hospital but medicines received did not change his situation a lot,” Valerie explains, while wrapping her son in the blankets.

In two health facilities (Cankuzo and Minyare), figures show that around 280 cases of cough-related diseases are observed each month, especially among children.

At the hospital, nurses had recommended her to clothe and cover well her son at night. His cough was caused by cold, she continues to explain.  Elvis’s grandfather took pity on his grandson and managed to buy one blanket to cover Elvis. He was able to buy only one blanket and the cough regressed a bit, Valerie noticed. But it was still not enough to cure him.

A week later after she had received two other additional blankets from World Vision, the cough sensibly reduced.

“After a week under these blankets, his situation is improving, no coughing as before. He had already lost weight. If you look at him at his age, he is four-year-old and has only 10kg and 600 grammes. He should have more than that has not been this cough,” Valerie says.

Donatien Bigiraneza, World Vision Burundi Cankuzo Area Development Programme Manager, is happy to be able to support those mothers with blankets. 240 mothers who benefited from those blankets are women whose children have recently been nutritionally rehabilitated by World Vision Burundi.

Since Cankuzo is sometimes a cold area, he hopes that those blankets are going to prevent those children to suffer from cough.

“These children suffered from malnutrition before they were nutritionally rehabilitated by World Vision, we want them to be protected from any other disease which can attack them. Malnourished kids have a fragile health,” he says, while talking to a joyous crowd at the distribution.