Greatest year-to-date + a lesson for those abroad….

Hello everyone,

It’s just a few days into the New Year and we are already seeing signs of this being UKF’s biggest year yet by God’s grace.
Our first hospital visit was very inspiring in terms of lives touched and members’ turnout (please see Ibraheem’s report below). Two of our members taught me a great lesson: the fact that we are not physically in Nigeria should not stop us from giving our time, they are in the US but their mom attended the IGH visit on their behalf.
Last week, we formally initiated procedures to register the foundation as a tax exempt entity in the state of Maryland, USA. Please join us in praying for a smooth process.
We have been able to secure a hospital appointment at Johns Hopkins Hospital (USA) for Ariyo (the 10 year old Urology patient we met in 2004), the estimated cost of his treatment is over $40,000, indeed this is a lot of money but the sources of funds are promising and we hope this kid and his mom will have the cause to smile and thank God very soon.
As you will see in Ibraheem’s report below, we are planning to start our prescription assistance program for patients in Q1-2007, our plan is to partner with a pharmacy that will directly supply drugs to selected patients facing financial difficulties and we will pay for these directly to the pharmacy. We are hoping to commit an additional N50,000 each month to fund this program, so we desperately need your support.
Please send us your donations today, we flagged off Q1-07 donations a few days ago and we are still eagerly awaiting your checks, please include us in your immediate financial plans, may God bless you.

Thank you very much people, big thanks to all those who are spending time and money to make our dreams come true, may God continue to bless you.

Ibraheem’s report –IGH visit on January 20th 2007

Team,
Our first visit for the year 2007 went very well. First I’d say we were highly honored by the presence and active participation of a Grandmother and Mother in the person of Mrs Bukky Adewale (standing in for two of her children in the USA). It was a great experience with her around us. We say thanks for being there. We started a bit late on Saturday 20th January 2007 with Nini taking care of the shopping. In attendance were Tope Sowande, Nini, Khadijah, Lanre Arikebi, Adesuwa, Bimbo (Caraale pharmacy), Amani, Sheriff, Hakeem, Bashir Bello and myself (Ibraheem). Ariyo & Mum also gave us support.

We did the packaging and proceeded to Ayinke house and the children’s' wards. The distribution also went well and we did have some left over packs because of fewer patients. The left over packs have been kept for distribution during the February visit.

A sum of =N=12,500 was contributed to attend to the needs of five patients. Out of these five patients, there was no priority case except for a patient with cancer of the blood. We were able to get the list of required drugs from the mother/nurse and Bimbo promised to deliver the drugs to the patient within the week. We gave Bimbo =N=2,500 cash and promised to settle the balance later.

Another major point was our discussion with Bimbo (Caraale pharmacy). The summary is that Bimbo's presence made a difference in our path to achieving the UKF drug assistance scheme. However, there was concern on abuse of this opportunity by both nurses and patients, we intend to mitigate this as we get along.

Thanks you all for your participation and we look forward to increased participation in February.