On Thursday evening, Bilai Aden sat on her hotel bed, rocking her 10-month-old baby.<\/p>\n
The baby\u2019s face was covered in a black hood and blanket, but Bilai would occasionally lift the fabric and peer inside.<\/p>\n
Baby Misky\u2019s face, full of scars and dead skin, would be revealed. What was more striking was the baby\u2019s eyes.<\/p>\n
Her eyelids looked like they were turned upside down, and she could not shut her eyes. Although she was asleep, her eyes remained opened.<\/p>\n
Bilai says the condition started when Misky was three months old, and has gotten worse each passing day. When Saturday Standard caught up with her in Eastleigh where she is staying after well-wishers airlifted her from Halani, Wajir County, she opened up on the rare skin condition that afflicts her four children.<\/p>\n
The mantra she has internalised since she gave birth to her last four children is: \u201cKeep them covered, and avoid talking about them even when people prod.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her story of bringing up children suffering from ichthyosis, a rare skin disease, has redefined motherhood for her.<\/p>\n
She describes it as a journey of confusion, tears and desperate search for solutions that would make her children live a normal life.<\/p>\n
It started six years ago.<\/p>\n
Her labour had been intensive. When she finally heard the cry of her third born child, a boy, she was elated.<\/p>\n
Silence and panic\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
She stretched out her hands to receive him, but noticed that the look on her midwife\u2019s face was full of horror.<\/p>\n
She recalls the silence and panic as the midwife bundled the baby in a cloth, and with urgency in her voice, said he needed to be washed.<\/p>\n
Bilai places her palms on her eyes and stares into space when she retells her first mother and son encounter.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis whole body was covered in black scabs. His ears looked bent, and his back had cracks,\u201d she says through a translator.<\/p>\n
No amount of herbal medicine, animal fat, and lotions helped. When she had her fourth baby, the look on the midwife\u2019s face was painfully familiar.<\/p>\n
She too had ichthyosis. The condition has also affected her fifth and sixth daughter. She does not understand the cause of the disease.<\/p>\n
She attributes it to bad luck. She only speaks Somali, and uses sign language, sighs and tears to tell the story of her sick children.<\/p>\n
Dr Monda Andati, a dermatologist in Nairobi says although ichthyosis can be managed, it is incurable. \u201cIt is inherited either as a dominant and recessive gene.<\/p>\n
It tends to be common among some communities, especially those that marry close relatives such as cousins,\u201d he says. A video of Bilai sitting on an old rug, crying while surrounded by her sick children that emerged on social media last week triggered emotions across the internet.<\/p>\n
A well-wisher, Rahma Mohamed, went to Wajir and brought her to Nairobi where she is currently seeking treatment for her children.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey had nothing in the house, and the children looked very sick. It was horrible, watching them itch and scratch due to the heat in Wajir,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Sofia Salat, Bilai\u2019s sister-in-law says the doctors have recommended ointment that costs Sh10,000 per bottle to manage the situation.<\/p>\n
For her four children, she says they will need around Sh40,000 per week, money the family cannot afford.<\/p>\n
It is not the first time Wajir is hitting news over children suffering from the rare skin disease.<\/p>\n
Two years ago, photos of Abshir Salat, a 10-year-old whose bones were poking through the skin due to extreme ichthyosis, was airlifted to Nairobi after intense campaigns on social media to save him.<\/p>\n
Toxic waste<\/b><\/p>\n
When his flight touched ground at Wilson, his eyes could barely open, as the disease had eaten up his entire frame.<\/p>\n
At the time, Issack Elmi, Nema chief researcher in charge of pollution, linked the infection to pollution in Wajir.<\/p>\n
He said dumping of toxic waste in the region could have triggered genes that cause the condition.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrigger factors like biochemicals dumped by oil exploring companies may be to blame,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Bilai says she is worried. Initially, the condition affected the skin only, but over the last few months, she has noticed her children\u2019s eyes getting squinted.<\/p>\n
The skin is also tougher than it was when they were younger.<\/p>\n
Source: STANDARD Digital<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On Thursday evening, Bilai Aden sat on her hotel bed, rocking her 10-month-old baby. The baby\u2019s face was covered in a black hood and blanket, but Bilai would occasionally lift the fabric and peer inside. Baby Misky\u2019s face, full of scars and dead skin, would be revealed. What was more striking was the baby\u2019s eyes. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1807,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-health-cluster","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1806"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1808,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1806\/revisions\/1808"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sooha.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}