Ella Turner seeks a motorised wheelchair
Published:Friday | May 28, 2021 | 12:12 AMRasbert Turner/Gleaner Writer
Hartlands resident Ella Turner vividly remembers May 2002 as if it were yesterday.
That was the fateful month when a dreadful auto crash left her paralysed from the waist down.
She describes the memories as painful.
Turner, 52, was on her way home from work in Kingston when the vehicle in which she was travelling crashed at Portia Simpson Miller Square in Three Miles.
Her hospitalisation lasted 12 months, she said.
“I realised that my spine was severely damaged and this is the result,” Turner said glumly.
Turner currently moves around by wheelchair.
Last weekend, she braved the scorching sunshine along the Hartlands main road collecting water from a pipe along the thoroughfare – about 30 metres from her house, which is not piped for supply.
“Is mi grandson mi a wait pon to come help me, so that me can carry it inside the yard,” Turner said.
“I am all right. Mi like to help her, as I love her,” four-year-old Jau Briscoe told The Gleaner as he filled a five-gallon bottle at the standpipe.
Turner is one of the estimated 220,000 disabled people living in the island, according to the 2014 edition of the Jamaica Survey of Living Conditions.
At the time, 51.9 per cent of the disabled population lived in rural areas, compared to 31.8 per cent in the Kingston Metropolitan Area.
A situational analysis of persons with disabilities published in 2018 by UNICEF, in collaboration with Digicel Foundation and the Jamaica Council for Persons with Disability, highlighted transportation as a major issue for those with disabilities.
TRAVERSE THE COMMUNITY
That’s not an unfamiliar challenge for Turner, who is pleading for a motorised wheelchair to replace the manual one she uses to traverse the community.
The mother of four is one of the 8.9 per cent of the working-age population who are unemployed.
“It is difficult, so if I could get one with the motor, I could do more. I would look work to wash clothes, but I can hardly move anywhere far with this,” the Hartlands resident said.
Joblessness among the disabled is estimated to be higher than among the able-bodied population.
Taxi operator Theodore Williams remembers well how, just before the onset of the COVID-19 outbreak in Jamaica last March, Turner tried her hand at sales in her bid to strive for independence.
“I think that she really need a better chair as she is not a lazy person ... , so if there is someone to help her, I know that Ella would help herself,” said Williams.
Persons wishing to assist Ella Turner may call 876-348-6285.