Meet Steve

During our visit to Oyo State, we had the pleasure of meeting Steve Aborisade. Steve works closely with the Commissioner of Health and is the coordinator and editor in chief of Projekthope, a local non-profit which advocates for HIV/AIDS awareness and education. A journalist by trade, Steve aims to use the media as a conduit for spreading accurate information about HIV/AIDS in Nigeria.

People living with HIV/AIDS in Nigeria face discrimination and are often considered social outcasts if their condition becomes known. There exists a tremendous amount of misinformation regarding how HIV/AIDS is spread and what treatments are available. Projekthope shows Nigerians that people with HIV/AIDS can live normal, productive lives if given adequate treatment.

Projekthope has provided training on HIV/AIDS issues for professional journalists and has conducted an HIV/AIDS rural awareness campaign in Oyo State. They have also begun a train the trainers program which trained 300 students in Lagos State as peer educators.

More information about Projekthope, including their upcoming documentary on HIV/AIDS in Nigeria, can be found here.

A Visit to Oyo State, Nigeria

Given the tumultuous atmosphere in Jos, Nigeria, Project HOW has begun to explore other regions in Nigeria in which to conduct missions. We recently teamed up with Dr. Femi Babalola and Dr. Remi Soile from World Health Mission to conduct a feasibility assessment for Oyo State in Southwest Nigeria.

The Governor of Oyo State, the Honorable Christopher Alao-Akala, has made public health a high priority and it’s evident in the construction and refurbishment of hospitals and other medical facilities throughout the state. W got a tour of the medical facilities in Ibadan, the capitol of Oyo State from Dr. Isaac Babalola Owolabi, the Commissioner for Public Health. Over six feet tall and with a formidable knowledge of medicine, business and global politics, the Commissioner has a commanding presence and a seemingly unending source of energy. Our tour was peppered with Nigerian history, philosophical musings on human well being and statistics on the major health issues in the region.

One of the many impressive initiatives begun by Dr. Owolabi is the National Health Management Information System (NHIS). The system tracks the major health issues in the 33 Local Government Areas (our equivalent of a county) in the State on a monthly basis. Available online and free to the public, the system provides the necessary data to track the prevalence of diseases in time and space and to measure the performance of specific intervention strategies. The health system can be found on the Ministry of Health’s site: www.oyohealth.org.

We also spent a day visiting the General Hospital and the General Hospital annex in Obgomosho, a medium-sized city two hours north of Ibadan. The hospital was about to be moved into a large multi-facility complex but the staff were currently working in fairly tight temporary quarters. The annex facility was on the outskirts of town and was almost completed.

2010 Journey to Jos

The tragic events that unfolded on the outskirts of Jos, Nigeria on March 7th have forced us to cancel our 2010 Journey to Jos mission. With over 300 people killed, we felt the region was too unstable to safely conduct our planned activities. One of our doctor’s and Project HOW’s acting medical director, Dr. Ene George, has decided to travel to Jos despite the danger. She will be supporting the staff at Evangel Hospital as they conduct roughly 200 fistula surgeries during a two-week timeframe. Dr. George has family in Jos that she will be staying with and has promised us she will stay safe!


Led by the inspirational Dr. Sunday, the dedicated staff at Evangel Hospital hosts a vesicovaginal fistula (VVF) reunion every year in early March. The reunion is a chance for women who have had VVF econstruction surgeries at the hospital during the previous year to return and meet other women who are recovered VVF patients. VVF can devastate a woman both mentally and physically, so the reunion provides a support group of sorts, where women can share stories and ideas and give hope to one another. The reunion has a dual fold purpose in that the women bring in women and girls from their villages that are in need of VVF reconstruction. Our original mission was to provide medical support, in the form of surgeons and anesthesiologists, equipment and supplies, during the reunion to sustain the increased number of VVF surgeries during the reunion. Dr. George will be working alongside Dr. Sunday and his staff and will provide us updates when she is able.

A quick background on VVF: VVF is a serious complication of childbirth, where prolonged labor results in serious tissue damage and tears holes between the vaginal wall and the bladder. The condition occurs more often in women who become pregnant at a very young age. Their small pelvic size and lack of access to proper medical care during childbirth results in the type of obstructed and prolonged labor that causes VVF. If the obstruction is not addressed in a timely manner, the prolonged pressure of the baby’s head against the mother’s pelvis cuts off the blood supply to the soft tissues surrounding her bladder, rectum and vagina, leading to tissue necrosis. The baby usually dies and the woman is left with VVF.

Living with the effects of this condition can be devastating. Women are often discarded by their husbands and live as social outcasts with no way to support themselves. Due to their poverty, lack of political status, and the stigma that the condition causes, these women have remained largely invisible to the outside world.

Welcome!

Welcome to Project HOW’s blog site!

We’ve set up this site as a space to discuss maternal and child health issues and as a means to follow Project HOW’s projects in West Africa. Providing quality healthcare to those in need is a monumental task that requires a team effort and so we’d like to use this site to collaborate and share ideas. We look forward to hearing your comments and suggestions!

Project HOW was originally conceived during a medical mission to Northern Nigeria in 2009. During the mission, the pain and suffering caused by the lack of affordable, long-term healthcare was devastating and was particularly noticeable in the women and children. The strong and courageous women that we met on the trip served as the impetus to start a non-profit that could help women in need, regardless of their income, religion or social status. And so Project HOW – Helping Other Women, was born.

According to the UN’s Millenium Development Goals Report, every year over half a million women die from prevantable complications of pregnancy or childbirth. In subsahara Africa, women have a 6% chance of dying from these complications. Similarily, an estimated 10 million children die before they reach their fifth birthday, mostly due to preventable causes. The Report found that one of the keys to improving maternal and child health was to “promote comprehensive and universal coverage of primary health-care systems, accompanied by sustained delivery of health services and women’s education programmes.” This strategy falls in line with Project HOW’s mission to provide the full continuum of healthcare for women and children.