Kutlwelo Mariri joined the hospital a year ago as a speech therapist but found herself in the deep end when the department was established. She relishes the challenge. She says the department was established when she convinced her boss Dr Chiapo Lesetedi to allow her to fully use the two degrees she got in speech therapy and audiology). "I am very thankful to him and owe everything I did and everything we have achieved here to him," she says. She says they saw the need to establish the department after they received many stroke patients trying to regain their speech. She says there were many children who were not talking despite the fact that they were not deaf or dumb. "The Ear, Nose and Throat department could not function alone without the audiology department," she explained.
She says it was very challenging to start something that is very new and almost non-existent in the country. "We had to work extra hard to explain why we needed this department," she says. The young speech therapist says that their patients are mostly stroke patients. So far, they have received and helped about 70 patients who have gone back to work after regaining their speech.
