Why I provide free medical services to less privileged –Enugu medical doctor

All the years Dr Samuel Ngwu, who hails from Ogui Nike in Enugu North Local Government Area of Enugu State sojourned in Dallas Texas, United States of America, he always had home in mind. He had practiced as a medical consultant in South Western Medical Centre, Dallas, USA. He is also a fellow of American College of Physicians; President and founder of a non-governmental organization, African Mission of Hope. He speaks on the activities of African Mission of Hope in this interview with Daily Sun.

It is a non-governmental organisation with the primary goal of alleviating African health care burden with the poor and the sick.
We have over the years brought doctors yearly with all kinds of specialty, doing free medical services to Nigerians in this Eastern part of the country. We go from villages to villages attending to health care needs of Nigerians and Africans.

We provide specialties, consultations, medications and drugs. We provide durable medical equipment like wheel chairs, crutches, beddings, to relive sores in people that have bed sores and diabetic equipment where they can check their sugars.
Primary health care awareness is also one of our focuses because we have found out over the years that there is many of what western people call avoidable deaths, which means that what shouldn’t kill somebody is killing somebody in Africa, especially in Nigeria. And once people are aware, they can do the right thing to prolong their longevity.

We target the masses. We are open to all Nigerians. We have people that bring all kinds of records. X-rays, reports for help with consultations. We also have ability to send people overseas for services that are not available here in Nigeria. We have taken a 20-year-old lady to America for brain tumour surgery. We have taken a three-year- old Nigerian to America with a hole in the heart for open heart surgery.
We have taken people with renal stones, which is kidney stones, that is too big for anything to be done in this country, overseas for urological interventions.

I own a medical clinic in the United States of America, which is quite a busy clinic and we support the NGO through the clinic. And that has been the main source of our funding for most of the work that we have done here in Nigeria and Africa.

Well, I grew up here in Africa. My parents were poor and I was a member of the Red Cross Society when I was in secondary school and we go around schools in Akpugo and Agbani, distributing high protein biscuits for malnourished children. Over the years when I became a medical doctor, when I come back on holidays with my family, I am overwhelmed with sick people lining up, coming with all kinds of medical ailments. From there, I started bringing things home to do one thing or the other. I remember one day, they brought a man with bad abdominal pain. He was in so much distress and then he couldn’t urinate and I had nothing with me, so I just felt his bladder was too full and based on my clinical experience, I knew it was prostatic hypertrophy.

I had 18 gauge needles and I just brought it out and pinched it in the pelvis and you can see the urine shooting out. He got relieved and that was how the pains left. Since then, even now, I have the equipment to take care of it now. So, that is how I started doing this job. I hated human suffering. And then too many avoidable deaths and from there it kept progressing. Like today, I have seen three patients. Unless they don’t know that I am in town. Sick people are coming in every day. And as a result, I started setting up medical hospital at presidential road, Enugu so that I don’t lose people to follow up. Then, I can have a place for continuity of care.

I actually started Enugu USA medical mission, but it got too political for my vision. So, I decided to leave them alone and formed the African Mission of Hope. And we have people on our computer data base that we provide with their drugs yearly. We have kids with seizure. Like the other day, about two years ago, I was coming back and a young kid was experiencing seizure and I stopped and held her until the seizure stopped.

We accompanied her to her home so that we know who her parents are. Since then, I have been buying her drugs. Her mother told me that at school when it starts, people surround her; she is knocking her head on the ground, getting bruises until finally it comes down. So, I have been able to stop that seizure from medicines for about three years now. So, these are the kind of work we are doing. We have people from Nsukka, Nkanu, Awgu and Nike on my data base that I send their one year medicine. Their medical supply will expire in January, but before then, I have enough time to re-supply their medicine. These are people with stroke, with heart disease, hypertension and congestive heart failure who need to continue their medicine daily for them to maintain their lifespan.

Well, the social service, as I do this, even hypertension is rampant here, though people don’t understand it. We have cases of kidney problem stage three because of uncontrolled blood pressure. So, medical awareness is an important part of the mission of African Mission of Hope. We have pamphlets we are distributing to people. If you have blood pressure, you have to take care of it because if you develop advanced kidney disease, you cannot treat it because the treatment is expensive which is dialysis.  And dialysis is another thing that we are hoping to supplement in our hospital because you have to get dialyzed three times in a week to be able to maintain your lifespan.

But here, I understand that dialysis cost N45, 000 a session and most people don’t have it. So, what they do is that they get one session and they wait until they develop what is called uremic symptoms, which means that the kidney disease is making them too sick. And then, they have to go and get one dialysis which may take about six weeks or three months. But, that is not how it is supposed to be, it is supposed to be three times a week to maintain a normal life span. And as I deal with all these with my personal resource, I decided to dabble into public service because I hate human suffering and I believe that we can do more.