Meet Jamie-Lee

Jamie-Lee is a real little chatterbox who loves people. She loves telling jokes and brings smiles and laughter to those around her. The family lives in George in the Eastern Cape.

She is five years old, and when she was three, her mom, Fidelia Moeurs noticed that her daughter’s legs ‘started to get like that’. According to Fidelia, the little girl had bow legs and was not born like that. The concerned mom took her to the local clinic, which referred them to George Hospital.

Fidelia reflects: “Jamie-Lee’s great-grandmother had legs like that. My eldest daughter also had the condition, but it wasn’t severe; she outgrew it. Initially, I thought Jamie-Lee would also outgrow the condition, but I noticed it only worsened.”

The little girl has Bilateral severe infantile Blount’s, a condition found in children that affects the growth plates around the knee. The disease causes the growth plate near the inside of the knee to either slow down or stops making new bone. Jamie-Lee needed surgery to put external fixators around her legs to straighten them. These would be removed over time.

Fidelia says that because George Hospital was not equipped to treat little Jamie-Lee with the necessary plates and aids she would need, they referred them to Red Cross Children’s Hospital in Cape Town. After doctors assessed the little girl, it was decided that she would need an operation to straighten her legs. However, the operation, scheduled for November 2019, had to be postponed at the last minute as Jamie-Lee had a bad chest infection.

Then the global pandemic, Covid-19, threw another spanner in the works, and the operation was postponed for an entire year. Fidelia was also pregnant and decided to give birth before continuing Jamie-Lee’s treatment.

Jamie-Lee was finally operated on in 2022, and there is a vast improvement in her legs. She receives treatment daily to straighten her legs, and while it is a bit painful, her elated mom is overjoyed and grateful. Her little girl did not go to school previously, as the children would mock her endlessly. Fidelia could not bear seeing her daughter in tears and says that while Jamie-Lee is a year behind, she wanted to wait until everything was over before sending her to school. Jamie-Lee will start school next year and catch up quickly because she is a bright and inquisitive little girl.

The dedicated mom and her child had spent two months at the Hospital and will return to George before Christmas. They will embark on their journey back home in an ambulance, and Fidelia has these parting thoughts: “Those years we did not have this kind of treatment available, and adults today still suffer because of their condition. While I initially hesitated, I am thrilled and grateful that my child could get treatment, and I want to thank the doctors at the Hospital.”

Fidelia’s smile is wider than the ocean, and we share her joy!

Blount’s is one of the most dominant deformities the Red Cross Orthopaedic Unit treats annually. The hospital plans to build a new Orthopaedic Unit which will be bigger and allow space to treat and accommodate more children like Jamie-Lee.

Donate towards a new Orthopaedic Unit at the Red Children’s Cross Hospital and help us make the little patients’ walk to freedom a little shorter! 100% of your donation goes directly towards the project.