This week’s UK-Nigeria online meeting brought literally life-changing news. We learned that two children chosen from the many thousands facing the nightmare of Sickle Cell Disease in rural Nigeria would be sent to Italy for rarely-offered stem cell treatment.
That leaves John Dada the unenviable task of selecting which youngsters to help, although the Italian hospital ‘s doctors have certain medical criteria to assist him in his decision. We have yet to learn the full details but, as a paediatric nurse myself, I have been thrilled by the remarkable progress of John’s Sickle Cell programme at Fantsuam in the past 18 months.
In a nutshell he and his team have screened around 6,000 children in rural Nigeria - data which I believe will prove invaluable to researchers. He took it upon himself to organise one of the few UN sickle cell awareness days in Nigeria and I suspect it was one of the most successful in Africa. You might want to see the Cicely's blog, a VSO at the time, and make up your own mind.
John has also just finished building a diagnostic laboratory which will process the screening and other blood samples. He and his team are offering education, genetic counselling and emotional support to the sufferers and their families. In addition John is providing what medical support he can with the resources at his disposal. He has an admirable habit of stepping in and addressing a pressing need - then worrying about the logistics of sorting out the financial resources afterwards. I firmly believe that this approach has contributed to making Fantsuam Foundation such a fine example of integrated development.
In another section of the meeting, we had an excellent update about the Photo Printing Project. Fantsuam Foundation is currently helping individual clients research whether a sme business idea is workable and whether it could be replicated elsewhere.
During the week the latest news from Attachab had been sent to the UK and then blogged.
At the meeting were told that FF was hoping for a grant from the French Embassy to help Reubens and his staff develop Attachab, but that this is not a certainty. FF haven’t yet heard the final verdict about funding from the French Embassy, and for now John is supporting Reubens’ work.
Reubens, his staff and volunteers are expected to be working at Attachab for at least another week. As well as using the bamboo in the construction of the two-storey building, Reubens is also training a local carpenter who usually works with wood to use it.
Reubens was a refugee from the Congo but now lives in Nigeria. He is also a musician and performs in Abuja we are told.
Two new youth projects were mentioned during the meeting:
We learned that a former volunteer is in the process of setting up a youth project. We were informed that he has recently been in the States and is looking to chose youths with leadership potential and who are interested in holding government to account.
The other project is looking at the possibility of a youth swap with young people from UK for three months.
The newly established Community Health Committees were discussed. The previous day John had attended two meetings of communities who are in the process of setting up their own CHC. The feedback was that one community meeting was well attended and enthusiastic and the other community not so much. Hausa was the language spoken at both of the meetings.
John reported that the acquisition of a smart phone had proved invaluable for him for accessing the internet. he went on to inform us that a blackberry in Kafanchan will cost up to N30,000, UKP125
and that the monthly charges are high, N3,000, UKP 12.5 per month. However he hopes that with competition growing, this will get cheaper.
The team is currently looking at software from Acumen Insights which should make it easier for the Nigerian team to access the internet via a smart phone. John want to explore using smart phones for use with the CHCs and sees them as being of potential use not only for health but also for other development purposes.
We were reminded that John and Comfort have in fact written a chapter for the GRACE book titled: " African women and ICTs- investigating technology, gender and empowerment". which looked at the use of cell phones by rural Nigerian women. It was arranged at the meeting that some spare copies of the book would be given to Frances to bring back with her when she returns to the UK.
It never ceases to surprise me how much information can be exchanged in the space of an hour’s online meeting (For the sake of accuracy we overran by 12 mins this week!)