When Ola Egwu Udensi and Nancy Idika Okoro all the way from Canada through their NGO brought their medical outreach home there was joy and succour, especially by the old people present at the venue of the event.
The outreach tagged “Chronic Disease Management Programme” targeted at exposing and managing major diseases starting from High Blood Pressure and High Sugar.
As nurses who have practiced for decades abroad, it was joyful seeing their trades and expertise brought home to alleviate and inform the people through the exposure of the dangers High Blood Pressure and Blood sugar constitute to individuals especially the middle aged and aged. Ola has this to say….
Can we know you please?
My name is Ola Udensi, married to Chika Egwu Udensi, I have been a nurse for over 17 years.
My business partner who is Nancy Idika Okoro and I started our healthcare consulting from 2014 in Canada.
This year we decided to come back to Nigeria and implement this programme. We were connected by Mr Kalu, the President of Ekoli Band of Hope Union.
I am based in Canada, specialise in nursing care. Currently I am a manager with a chronic disease management programme for vulnerable populations in Canada.
Can you tell us about this programme you came home with?
This programme is called Chronic Disease Management Programme, we’re trying to prevent all these chronic diseases. We’re focusing on high blood pressure and high blood sugars because usually people walk around without knowing that they have high BP. So we’re here, we’re here to like teach about it, trying to prevent it. By trying to identify people that has it and follow up with them. Because the thing is, if it’s not managed, if you don’t get to handle it on time, it leads to complications down the line, which is kidney failure. All your organs just start shutting down. And we don’t want that happening. These days you see people dying with no feasible reason. You might go somewhere, they’ll say, oh, that person is dropped and he’s dead.
But some people say, oh, its jazz or other things. But it could be, you know, deeper than that. It could be that the person had been suffering from high blood pressure long time ago without all these things. So, my business partner and I decided that we’ll come back to the community since we do it abroad, this is the kind of thing we do abroad. Why can’t we bring it back home? That’s the programme.
Among other places, why did you choose Edda?
Edda is my home. You know, my husband is from here, he’s from Edda. We care about the people.
You know, you have to have a voice that advocates for the people, people like you and me. We don’t need the blood pressure machines ’cause we are aware of what’s going on.
So, we target the vulnerable population, people that don’t have a voice, you know, people that don’t speak for themselves, people that has no one to speak for them. So, we came down here. They’re my husband’s people, they’re my people.
These are my business partner’s people and her husband’s people. And we decided to bring this good thing home.
Are you both from here or you’re here by marriage?
… general laughter…
We are married to Nde-Edda.
Naturally, I am from Umuahia while my business partner is from Akwa Ibom.
Wow, that’s beautiful, is this the first time you’re bringing such to Nigeria?
Yes, this is the first time we’re bringing this. This programme we implemented in Edda is the first one we actually did practically like checking blood pressures and blood sugars in Nigeria. A few days ago we were in Abia the state, we did a programme there where we actually lectured secondary students on basic first aids, you know, first aid measures, what to do, like basic first aid situations like fainting, nose bleeding, how to act. That was another program. We will follow up in that in the future. Most times when people fine problems there’s no follow up, I noticed there’s no follow up mechanism in Nigeria. You just find, identify your problem, there’s no follow up. But our goal is to ensure that the people, because we did have stats of people we did, we did had a record, we did have people for follow up.
So we have introduced ourselves to the matron at the health centre and we haven’t closed our report because I would like to get her engaged because she knows the people and she’s also the point of contact for the healthcare here. So we have identified some people and would like to follow up with these people.
You just mentioned the program you had in Abia State, where exactly in Abia did it hold?
Umuahia.
Now you’re in Edda, is this program going to be a continuum or this is the first and last?
Yes! You know one thing in Nigeria is the lack of maintenance culture, you start something is not sustained. So, that’s what we are building now, we are trying to create that presence, establish that trust between us and the community members and I think we did a good job yesterday by doing that.
Haven created and established that, what’s your next plan?
The next thing now is to still have a meeting now Mr Kalu to see how we can make this sustainable. We need voices we need people to fund the programme, we did it ourselves this time around and it was amazing, doing things for people is good but resources like that without partners it may not be sustained. We want the action figures, we want stakeholders in the community to own it. We want to have medications available at the clinic for patience to have access to if the need arises. We want a new health centre, we want to see and do better. We want people to know that health is priority.
This is your first outing and you started in Ekoli, do you have intentions of extending it to other parts of Edda?
Oh yeah! There’s plan even going above and beyond Edda, this is health we are talking about here, even beyond west Africa with this. It’s unfortunate, you know this chronic disease management, they are very well managed if you can identify them on time and most people die from it for lack of knowledge and lack of resources. So this is what we are here to identify the problem, if there’s a problem and teach. It involves a lot of teaching, some of the community members are stressed, all those things contribute just teachings you know instead of eating four wraps of Akpu ...laughter… you can have one wrap with lots of vegetable as soup and I know life is stressful but you can only do what you can, you’re not going to kill yourself. Even if you get stressed and drop dead that stress with still be there. You know little little teachings here and there and also get medications.
We can reach out to people, people that want to donate that’s plan for the future.
How was the response of the people yesterday?
It was good, very positive the first day we saw about, approximately 65 patience, I mean community members, I like using patients, community members then yesterday we saw about 49 persons, but I think there was an event yesterday that affected the attendance but it was very positive, people are already happy and that’s the goal for people to know that they’re being cared for.
What age bracket are you looking at?
Naturally, the funny thing here is when we are doing this program we tend to identify people between the Age bracket of 40 and 65 but funny enough it’s more of eithers that showed up yesterday even some identified younger one ran away when we told them to come, so we will want to make an outreach for people to know that they start getting checked in their late thirties, forties because the life style you choose when you are younger eventually catches up with you when you get older that’s it.
A program of this magnitude needs funds, so where is the funding coming from?
We do not have fund per se, there’s no structure in place yet but we just give to the people the little we could give, but in the future this is what we need sit down with Mr Kalu. Like the first day we did make it clear to him that we do need funding for this program for it to be sustainable and successful and like I said I am not a politician, I am not here for politics. If you ask my husband he will tell you, I usually excuse him while watching political programs. I am here for the people, that’s it.
We are trying to get stake holders, anybody could actually contribute so that we can actually make this thing more successful our community members if nothing just assure them that their life matters to us.
Let’s come home, you are coming from far. You were married from Umuahia and you’ve been living in Canada now you’re here, how is the reception?
amazing, I love it. …Laughter…
You love home?
I love home! Awum nwa afor! I grew up, my secondary school was in Obakala, Umuahi. So, I grew up with my grandparents in Umuahia and I have my husband people they treat me like a queen.
Who doesn’t like to be treated like a queen?
Wow, of course you’re a princess for marrying a prince….general laughter…
There you go …hahahahahah
Mrs Ola Udensi, we will be glad to follow up the program progresses.
Thank you!
