Inspiring CSR Story

MTNF: SAVING LIVES, MENDING HOLES IN THE HEART

The stagnation of healthcare infrastructure across the country is not without grave implication for a vast majority of the populace who would otherwise have benefitted from a functional public healthcare infrastructure. So endemic is this national malaise that those that can afford to pay for the best healthcare services must look beyond the shores of Nigeria for such. In the absence of financial wherewithal, everyday folks, on the other hand, now look mainly towards religion for miraculous solutions to health problems that medical sciences can solve. 

Available statistics highlighting the number of lives lost to non-malignant ailments such as malaria is damning. Same for typhoid fever, polio, measles and other preventable or manageable ailments some of which have been eradicated in most part of the world. Churches, bus stops, newspapers and streets of major cities such as Lagos and Kano are besieged daily by Nigerians in search of funds needed to treat any of the motley ailments afflicting them.

Youthful Patience Edobor, a single mother was hitherto in this class. The precarious state of health of the apple of her eye, Bosco Wealth, gave her serious concerns. She ran from pillar to post in search of financial assistance with below par sum of N30,000 as returns for her efforts. Patience was in dire need of N2.5 million to enable her child travel to India for open heart surgery. PM News used prime space to plead Bosco’s case with the masses. Taking the philanthropic baton from the PM News, a magazine called The Premier also solicited funds on behalf of Bosco but to no avail. 

In distress, and panicking for the life of her daughter, Patience hobbled from church to church in search of material and spiritual help, which seemed elusive at that point in time. Her travails lasted several months during which her daughter’s heart condition deteriorated. The undivided attention, with which she tried to nurse her ailing daughter back to health, worsened an already bad situation; she lost her job. 

Recounting her ordeal, Patience Edobor revealed that her daughter was diagnosed as having a hole in the heart when she was three years old. “Bosco could not walk until she was two years old. Her temperature was always very high. When she was breathing she was always gasping for breath, you would think she was suffering from asthma attack. I was advised to take her to General Hospital, Ikeja. When we got to the hospital, they did a lot of tests and I was told that she had a hole in the heart, and that I needed money for surgery. I was told I needed N2.5 million for surgery in India. When I heard that I thought I was dreaming.

“I asked myself, where am I going to get N2.5 milllion from. They just said go and get N2.5 million for surgery, go and look for money. I thought maybe these people do not know what they were doing. How can my daughter have a hole in the heart? For the first three months I did nothing about it. I just said to myself, God will heal her. But somebody said to me that the only thing that will remove that hole from her heart is surgery. I saw other people with similar challenge going out to look for money; I asked myself what am I waiting for.” So she started hustling for money. Nonetheless, she has little to show for her unilateral search for funds which took her to newspaper houses and churches.   

Help however came her way in a remarkable way. She had just recharged her phone and her service provider which happens to be MTN Nigeria, the leading telecommunications service provider in the country, sent her a text message thanking her for choosing the network, and also to inform her of the MTN Foundation set up to touch lives. When Patience checked the text message, she was surprised to know that MTN has a foundation. She made up her mind to seek help from the MTN Foundation.

“Nobody told me about the MTN Foundation. I found out about the Foundation after receiving a message from MTN after recharging my phone early this year. I then asked around for the MTN office and I was told it was in Ikoyi. I came down with a letter and my daughter’s picture. When I dropped the letter and did not get response immediately from MTN, I thought maybe they did not want to help me. I thought, why should they even help me, am I their responsibility; or maybe they have decided to help some other people, and that is why they have refused to respond. I just forgot about MTN,” Patience Edobor recalls.

While she had given up on MTN, the leading telecommunications company did not give up on her. Her request for help was passed on to MTN Foundation, the non-profit arm of the company set up to initiate and execute Corporate Social Responsibility programmes in Nigeria, in the areas of health, education and economic empowerment. Without her knowledge, they had contacted Apollo Hospitals, one of the best specialist healthcare providers in India, on how to remedy her daughter’s ailment. 

Without doubt, she could not believe her own ears when a member of staff of MTN Nigeria told her on phone to come to Golden Plaza, MTN Nigeria’s Head Office located in Ikoyi, for a meeting on how to find a lasting solution to her daughter’s hole in the heart ailment. In her words: “One Saturday, I went to church to clean the premises. I had finished cleaning but I did not leave the church premises. I was sad because of my daughter’s health condition. I was just confused and was crying when I received a call from Mrs. Williams that I should come to MTN on Tuesday. I did not believe it and that night I could not sleep. I told everybody about it. When I visited MTN office, they just asked if I had a passport, and I said no. They processed one for me free of charge and I went to India on their bill”.       

The case of self employed Ayodele Lasisi, who deals in second hand cars (tokunbo), is not any different from that of Patience Edobor. His son’s hole in the heart was diagnosed late. It was not until 2008, when he was 9 years old. Lasisi had noticed that his son’s heart beat is irregular. He took his son to a private hospital where he was told that the boy had pneumonia. It was only when he chose to have his son treated at the General Hospital, Ikeja, that he realised that he had a hole-in-the-heart case to contend with. It would cost the sum of N1.8 million to close the hole in the heart of his boy.

For two years, he ran from pillar to post to raise the much needed funds for corrective surgery in either Ghana or India.  According to him, “I have believed God for a miracle concerning my son’s health. His heartbeat was irregular and he was growing slowly. His younger ones have outgrown him when it comes to stature. He has a hole in the heart which was diagnosed in 2008, but we were told to raise N1.8 million for his treatment in India.  I have done everything possible to raise the funds before MTN intervened. I was about to use my land as collateral to borrow money before MTN helped us. 

“I had decided to borrow the N1.8 million from a money lender, and I was to repay N3.6 million because the interest is exactly N1.8 million. If you borrow a hundred Naira from a money lender, you will repay N200, and you must have collateral. I was about to take that step when MTN called me. I wrote to MTN in December 2009, to ask for help and they invited me for a meeting in February. It was at the meeting that Mrs. Williams told me not to borrow from money lender that MTN would help me. Today, I have travelled with my son to India, where he underwent open heart surgery. The trip was sponsored by MTN.”

Presently beyond himself with joy because his son now lives a normal life, Ayodele Lasisi is singing MTN’s praise for setting up MTN Foundation to help the masses. According to him, it was real philanthropy at play because he does not know anybody at the MTN office. The only connection he has with the company was as a subscriber of six years, which he believes has nothing to do with the decision of the leading telecommunications company to sponsor his son for operation in India.  

Explaining MTN’s decision to intervene in the children’s cases, General Manager, Corporate Communications of MTN Nigeria, Funmi Omogbenigun, says the company is touched by the plight of children with the hole-in-the-heart defect, especially the ones whose parents are helpless because of lack of funds; hence the decision to come to their aid in remedying a curable ailment. She disclosed that the foundation had no special relationship with the beneficiaries’ prior to their selection. She said the Foundation receive requests from parents and also pick out some interesting cases from TV, radio and newspapers. 

"We select the most critical ones, especially young ones. We generally send them to South Africa or India for treatment. At our office in Lagos, we have in-house medical department and our doctors would assess and contact other doctors in different parts of the world. We procure for them visas, passports, air tickets, health certificates and any other thing they would need to travel for treatment,” she said. 

In her words, the aim of assisting those in need is to make a difference, stressing that though it might seem as only a drop in the ocean, it has lasting impact on the lives of the children and their parents. She called on other corporate organisations and well-to-do individuals to take up the challenge of making a difference in people's lives.

In 2009, the MTN Foundation sponsored nine children with hole in the heart for open heart surgery that remedied their ailment. This year, the Foundation has sponsored ten children already. It seems the leading telecommunications service provider is working towards surpassing last year’s performance. 

Other interventions of the Foundation in heath include a pragmatic programme aimed at tackling HIV/AIDS and sickle cell anaemia, as well as the establishment of mammography and haemodialysis centres in strategic hospitals across the country, among other major projects. The centres, which are to be commissioned soon, will bring succour to the womenfolk, who will be able to screen for breast cancer more easily, and people suffering from renal disease, who will be able to undergo dialysis more conveniently and affordably.