BY SILAS NKALA
BULAWAYO-BASED physiotherapist Precious Madzimbe has penned a book titled Paediatric Physiotherapy: Patient Assessment in the African Context after realising that there was no locally written book on paediatric physiotherapy.
Madzimbe told NewsDay Life & Style that the book was being sold on Amazon.
“After completing my studies at the University of Cape Town, I decided to write this book which is the first paedia-physiotherapy manuscript written by a black Zimbabwean so far since independence.
“It is contextualised into our setting to meet our needs, what we need to address locally like the local conditions and also how we should manage them using the resources that are there,” he said.
The 35-year-old Madzimbe said the book was mainly helpful to physiotherapy students and qualified physiotherapists in the management of paediatric patients.
“There was this gap that there were no authors in the subject of physiotherapy, as a result we were relying on foreign books which were written in the United Kingdom and America which are not in the African context.
“The challenges associated with them are that they are difficult for students to read and understand because most of the examples used in these books are foreign,” he said.
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“Usually, the paediatric population is defined as a population between the ages of 0 to 21 as defined by the American Academy of Pediatrics.
“Frequently, children sometimes are mismanaged because they have unique needs which are different from those of adults.”
Madzimbe said paediatric physiotherapy books were expensive since they are imported.
“Lots of foreign currency is required by our institutions to purchase physiotherapy books and this makes it a challenge as some of the training institutions have few copies because they cannot afford them.
“But now if you have a local book, it can be easily accessed at a cheaper price and you may save forex,” he said.
Madzimbe said he started writing the book in 2018.
“Writing a medical book is difficult, it’s not like writing a novel, because it has to be reviewed. I had to look for external reviewers so that it can be acceptable to the readers.
“In Bulawayo there is only one paediatric physiotherapist who is myself, so I had to source external reviewers,” he said.
“Fortunately, I managed to contact a professor in paediatrics at the University of Cape Town who came in to do a thorough review of that book.
“He is also a paediatric physiotherapist. I also managed to get a Ghanaian paediatric physiotherapist working in Ghana who also came in to review that book.”
Madzimbe encouraged young persons to be innovative, identify gaps in any subject they are interested in and come up with books.
