The Obijackson Foundation and friends are partnering to bring life-saving intervention to Nigerian children suffering from congenital heart defects, particularly those from struggling families.
The collaboration, also with Hospitals for Humanity (HFH) to perform the operation, aims to bring a beacon of hope for those who cannot help themselves in a country where the prevalence of congenital heart diseases is substantial.
Mr Ernest Azudialu-Obiejesi, the Chairman of Nestoil and Jackson Group, spoke in Lagos at a dinner organised with the aim of bringing his friends to raise more funds for surgeries for children with heart conditions.
The Nestoil chairman said: “This programme is our own little way of helping children who have hole in the heart and who are suffering from heart disease.
“A lot of children have died as a result of this disease, especially in the Eastern part of Nigeria.
“So, our hospital—the Obi Jackson Women and Children Hospital (OWCH) decided to embark on a mission on how to help these children.
“We started partnering with these doctors who are visiting Nigeria from different parts of the world to come and help us do this surgery in Nigeria, to be able to save these children.
“The whole of this exercise is the Obi Jackson Foundation’s way of trying to support, help these children and also make sure that we help the parents also, to give them a new lease of life’’.
Azudialu-Obiejesi said the foundation had done quite a lot of screening in recent times for children with heart conditions, with some having done surgeries.
“So far, about 16 of them have had this surgery and all of them were successful.
“We have some of them here present that are beneficiaries of it, and we have some of them who are still waiting to have the surgery.
“But the whole aim of organising a dinner is to bring my friends together to see how we can raise more funds, because it’s quite expensive operation; to have this surgery is quite expensive.
“My friends and I, together, let us see how we can help more children’’
According to him, there are no fewer than 100 children currently waiting to be operated on by the foundation.
Azudialu-Obiejesi said the initiative came as a result of witnessing the suffering of the children, from clinical presentations in their hospital.
“As a foundation, we own a hospital; we support healthcare.
“We also support children in their education; we do quite a lot of life saving activities, we also provide for the needy in the southeast.
“So, for us, this is a programme we want to sustain and the only way we think we can sustain it is by creating awareness.
“Letting other people know what we’re doing and how they can support us to make sure more children benefit from this,’’ he said.
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the first phase of the intervention saw a heart screening programme conducted between March 19 and 22 March at the OWCH in Okija, Anambra.
It was to determine the status of the condition of patients, its severity, and the level of intervention required.
The assessment revealed that some of them no longer required surgeries as their defects were corrected.
However, others with critical conditions, most of whom are facing uncertain futures, were placed on a waiting list; awaiting the opportunity for a life-changing operation that will be held in May, August, and November.
Established in 2010, the ObiJackson Foundation tackles the challenges of poor literacy, nutrition and healthcare in Eastern Nigeria,
Also speaking, Dr Segun Ajayi, the CEO and Founder of Hospitals for Humanity, partners in the project, revealed that they had been doing pediatric open heart surgery for the last 10 years in Nigeria.
According to him, it is challenging having a congenital heart disease in developing countries such as Nigeria.
“Saving little ones hearts is our goal. We want to save as many little hearts in Nigeria as possible.
“It’s pretty important and it’s challenging; having a congenital heart disease in a developing country as Nigeria is challenging and that is why we’re here.
“Most parents, if not all cannot afford the cost of open heart surgery and so organisations like us, and organisations like Obi Jackson Foundation partner together to provide those services for children within Nigeria.
“So, we have been able to screen over 2,000 children in Nigeria and we’ve also been able to do up to 250 surgeries in Nigeria also’’.
Ajayi said the organisation only perform pediatric open heart surgery, cardiothoracic surgery and cardiology.
He urged governments to pay more attention to heart diseases.
Dr Pamela Ego, the Executive Director, Obi Jackson Foundation, reaffirmed that the organisation focused basically on helping children with congenital heart defect, and was partnering with Hospitals For Humanity.
She said there was need to create awareness about heart defect in children to get as many people involved as possible to help.
“This foundation is transforming communities, one life at a time.
“We focus on vulnerable people, vulnerable communities, predominantly in the southeast, but all over Nigeria.
“We’re partnering organisations that have similar values with us, and we work predominantly in the health education and empowerment space,’’ she said. (NAN
