An IRT-Sponsored MAP Shipment arrives just in time to Kirker Hospital to save lives !!!
In January 2014, little Dawami, a 20 month child and his mother Fanna Kellou, a young mother in her early thirties, travelled more 50 miles from Yunusari, a village on the border of Nigeria to get to the Kirker Hospital of Maine Soroa to seek medical attention. Little Dawami and his twin sister Daguira were both suffering from severe pneumonia. Their mother was suffering from poly-arthralgia. Little Dawami’s condition was further exacerbated by sickle cell disease. Even though a major concern to his parents, there was nothing they could have done to relieve his pains and sufferings from the sickle cell condition, other than using alternative medicine which often does not work. Just like most people in Maine Soroa, and Niger in general, little Dawami’s parents could not afford to treat their loved ones due to expenses involved. It costs more than $100 to treat a sickle cell crisis, and people living on less than a dollar per day just can’t afford it. They are resolved to watching their beloved ones suffer from intense aches and pains caused by the crisis.
Shortly after the Kirker Hospital received a MAP shipment of medicines, the news travelled fast enough that it reached neighboring communities in a couple of days. This allowed Fanna Kellou to travel to Maine Soroa, and benefit from medicines being provided free of charge to patients. Thanks to support from MAP and International Relief Teams (IRT), both twins were treated with cotrimoxazole for their pneumonia, and little Dawani received paracetamol, ibuprofen, folic acid and antibiotics. Had it not been for this IRT-sponsored shipment, little Dawami and his twin sister would have died. There would have been no way for their parents to come up with more $100 to pay the medicines needed for their treatments.
The shipment, which includes antibiotics, pain relievers, antihypertensive agents, vitamins/minerals, and various supplies brought great relief to thousands of patients in Niger, a country consistently ranked as the poorest by the United Nations Human Development Index.
MAP International and KAMRA’s joint support is making real difference by making available and accessible much needed medicines and supplies in some of the remotest and most isolated places of Niger, where more than 85% of the population lives on less than one dollar per day. In these underserved areas where people can not obtain basic medicines, a dose of antibiotics can literally mean the difference between life and death.
