JOHANNESBURG - South Africa has no reliable national system to track birth defects or childhood disability.
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This leaves thousands of children invisible to the health system.
Disability is under-researched, despite one in ten children living with functional difficulties.
Karen Mara Moss, the CEO and founder of STEPS, an organisation helping families access treatment for clubfoot says neglecting childhood disability is more expensive in the long-run.
Treatable conditions like clubfoot go undetected, and more than half of affected children never receive care, locking them into preventable disability.
Moss discussed the importance of early intervention and parent education about the condition.
She encouraged parents who are concerned about their newborns' feet to seek an evaluation from an orthopaedic specialist.