A nurse’s white rubber gloves snapped around her wrists as she prepared a measles shot Tuesday morning for 7-year-old Christina Freeman.
Tears streamed down Christina’s cheeks as she squirmed and screamed to get away from the approaching needle.
”I don’t like that,” she hollered as her mother, Tammy Freeman, tried to still her protests.
Freeman, who home-schools her daughter, thought she had kept Christina’s vaccinations up to date. but a glance at her medical records showed that Christina had one more round of shots to go.
So, they traveled from their North Side home to take advantage of health screenings and services being offered at ”Look What I Can Do,” a public-awareness event created to alert parents of the benefits of early detection and prevention of health-related problems.
Tuesday’s event in chicago was part of a statewide campaign during April, deemed ”Early Intervention Month.” it is targeted at uncovering potential health problems among children, especially newborns to 3-year-olds.
Two Chicago Department of Health mobile units were parked in front of the Noodle Kidoodle toy store, 2163 n. Clybourn Ave., as parents lined up beside their often unhappy children awaiting immunizations.
Inside the toy store, the mood was considerably more upbeat, as children darted between stuffed animals, books, computer games, school supplies and even benny the bull, in a rush to cram a small stage where the state’s first lady, Brenda Edgar, read a story to them.
Children and their parents or baby-sitters then visited stations set up throughout the store to test vision or hearing or to detect dangerous lead levels. A bus shuttled parents and children from Chicago Housing Authority units during the event.
Tuesday’s program was one of the biggest comprehensive efforts in the state to raise awareness about health issues with children, Edgar said. While many schools offer screenings for individual problems, rarely are so many tests available in the same place at the same time, she said.
But some activists have said the event glossed over problems that plague the state’s early-intervention system. in February, a federal judge said Illinois was dragging its feet in implementing programs that would help developmentally disabled children.
State figures show that 32,000 such children qualify for physical, speech or occupational therapy, but only one-fourth of them are getting it, according to Karen Berman, a staff attorney for Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which filed a 1994 lawsuit against the state.
She said most parents don’t even know they have a right of access to early intervention programs.
