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| James Umekwe |
With a passion to improve the quality of
health care system, Mr. James Ogbuka Umekwe and a team of medical experts from
the United States have been giving low fee-charging medical services to people
living in different communities in Abia State. In this interview with ADA DIKE,
he speaks on why he is passionate about improving the living standard of
Nigerians through his clinic, provision of boreholes and an agricultural
programme.
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Health care system in Nigeria is seen as the
privileged rights of the rich and the wealthy, that is why a Nigerian born US
based engineer, Mr. James Ogbuka Umekwe, set up a medical centre in Ozu Abam,
Arochukwu Local Government Area, “Upon This Rock Medical Center”, where people
living in Abia State can be treated.
In December 2012, Umekwe brought to Nigeria a team
of about 12 experts from the US and some of them were doctors, nurses, medical
students who were in their final year. That was when the hospital “Upon This Rock Medical Center” was inaugurated. At the inauguration, the community people, the traditional rulers, the
chiefs and everybody were in attendance. After the inauguration, they had their
first medical mission for two weeks and it was successful.
According to him, “We were
able to do a lot of surgeries. We took care of about 55 operations, hyena, fibroid, and glaucoma, just name it. We saw about 1,700 patients on that
particular mission, so we did that for two weeks and went back to the US.
“Then in May/June 2013, it
was so good that we have to come back again because there were some patients
that we didn’t get to see their cases. So we came back again with about a team
of 10 experts; three of them were medical students, four nurses and three
doctors. We did the same thing and had more than 55 surgeries. We saw
more than 1,400 patients.
“Interestingly, from
December 26, 2013 to January 14, 2014, we worked with a team of nine medical
personnel; two medical doctors, nurses and medical students. We had 64
surgeries and we saw over 1,400, patients. The good thing about it is that, we
have the support of the Federal Medical Centre (FMC) in Umuahia.
Its director, Dr Abali Chukwu, is my good friend. The first time we came in 2012, he gave
us the FMC theatre, so that was where we did all the major surgeries. We went
to FMC with 13 patients, four of them were children for hernia and six women for
fibroids and we had two with tumour and one had disfiguration of his legs,” he
explained.
However, they had an interesting
case last year. When they were in Port Harcourt, there was a young man
who came to the hotel where they lodged and he had what is called AVS, he
was involved in an accident and had a very big scar on his face and because the
blood was flowing all the way into his brain, it kept expanding
and getting bigger and bigger. “We took him to “Upon This Rock
Medical Centre” and the operation was successful.
“So these are some of the
things we do. When we go for a medical mission, it’s not just coming to
help the community but there are exchange of ideas, experience, knowledge and
transfer of some technology that may help doctors. We had our fourth medical
mission from March ending to April 8, 2014 and the seven man- team comprised a
surgeon who is very good in vascular surgery; one neuropsychiatric, two nurses,
two surgeons and one paramedic, who works with California Medical Service. The
paramedic is well trained and he is also an instructor. So he conducted
emergency medical response training to a team of medical doctors from FMC’s
doctors in Umuahia on April 3 and 4. We had all the
teaching materials, in a way; it was part of re-training and continuous
education for the doctors. We also had one agricultural consultant, an area
that we are gradually delving into.
“We have an ambulance, so
we are doing integrated emergency medical system which we basically called
mobile clinic, just to persuade people not to think that ambulance is only
for corpse. I have come to realise that when people get sick in the rural
areas and villages in the midnight, sometimes, they die from the sickness
that could be easily solved. Somebody can collapse into coma in the midnight
and there are no medical attentions, the person can just die. Even ordinary
malaria can kill somebody because there is no doctor, no medical services.
We have a team so that when people in the remote area of
the community suddenly fall sick in the mid night, they can pick them up
with the ambulance and bring them to the
hospital. If it is something we cannot do right away, we take
the person to the FMC,” Umekwe added.
Commenting on the fee they
charge at the centre, he hinted that the first mission they did in 2012 was
totally free. “Then, we realize that anything free doesn’t have valued as such.
So we decided to charge N200.00 only for a card and all our surgeries across
board costs N7,000, no matter the degree of the condition of the patient, so
that is what we have done. We had a case where the same surgery that we would
have done while we were here, but because it was the time for us to leave, we
couldn’t see the patients and we send them to the FMC, where they were charged
N70, 000.00 for the same operation we would have charged N7, 000.00. So we just
put that little money to attach value to it.
“The whole place is always flooded. There is always a crowd. You can never
see the last patient. We had had a crowd the day we left and sometimes, it
hurts because we did not have enough time to treat them,” he said.
For a gigantic project like
this one that is not profit-oriented always faces a financial challenge. Asked who
the financiers of the medical centre are, Ogbuka said: “To be honest with you,
I put down the seed money. Nobody gave me money to build the hospital; I built
it with my own money. The help that I got was from the organization that
provided medical supplies which we used. The organization is in the US, they
gave me medical equipment and supplies that we are using. That was the lady who
said, “if you build a clinic, I will help you”. So after building the clinic,
she supplied the medical equipment that we are using.”
On
who takes care of the bills of the medical team from the US, he says, “The doctors are the ones responsible for
their fares. They voluntarily come here at their own expenses and they have
been doing that since we started.”
He was able to convince the
communities to accept the medical assistance because his philanthropic
gesture has no political undertone, “And that is one of the reasons I never
wanted to be involved in politics. I built the hospital on my
private land. I try as much as possible to stay away from politics.”
He
registered the medical centre with the state government. He adds: “The Ogbuka Umekwe Hope
Foundation is a fully registered non-government organization. The foundation is
registered in Abuja and Upon This Rock is operating under the
foundation.”
It could be tasking for one
to have a medical centre in Nigeria but lives in the US, so taking care of the
patients when the team goes back to the US is a major challenge to him. “It’s
very tough to have a permanent doctor to live in a rural community and that is
the problem. But, we engaged a doctor who came from Southern Sudan and
stayed in Nigeria and took care of patients. He made his first visit on Monday,
March 31, 2014. He came with his wife and worked for some time and went back to
get some things and then come back, but because of the war in Sudan, he was
unable to come right away. Right now, we are having doctors from FMC that come
whenever we schedule surgeries. We also have doctors from FMC that help us in
diabetic related cases. Presently, we are actively looking for a doctor to
employ permanently until the Sudanese doctor comes back. One of the reasons why
we have not got somebody is because we are looking for a surgeon that can do
surgery and take care of other issues.”
There is a clinic in Ozu
Abam set up by the government. Umekwe was asked whether the presence of that clinic
is affecting the number of patients that visit his clinic and he says, “The
government renovated the existing health centre and I was part of that
renovation because I had a discussion with the Medical Director of Federal
Medical Centre, Umuahia, Dr. Abali Chukwu. So we agreed that it would be good
to have their presence which I volunteered to provide medical equipment for
them. Doctors go that centre twice a week. We have doctors from FMC also that
come to our clinic on a regular basis. So we are all working together for the
good of the community.”
Commenting on the villagers’
reactions towards medical care, he said, “Basically, it has been good. When you
do things, you don’t do it and expect everybody to react positively. We do it
for the sake of God and also to give back to the community. But there have been
a lot of positive reaction from the community.”
Concerning the new project he is handling presently
in Abam, he said, “Apart from the medical missions that we have been having
since December 2012, we added a new project, that is, doing water boreholes. So
we want to make sure that there is clean drinking water for the community so we
started doing boreholes. Last December, we did a borehole at Abam High School,
Ozu Abam because we realised that the students usually cross the road to buy
sachet water. Their safety is one of our concerns. So we decided to locate the
borehole at Abam High School. Despite the fact that we wanted to make sure that
the students have clean water, the school is my alma mater.
“We are also going to be locating one borehole in
each village and we want to capture all the 28 villages in Abam, probably, in
the next couple of years. That is one of the reasons I came to Nigeria. I will
be going around and finding a location we can do the December borehole.”
How has the hospital fared? He was asked. “The
hospital has been doing very well. A lot of things are happening. We have just
received new equipment to receive full anaesthesia so that we can have full
operation/full surgery because we have been doing local anaesthesia. We have
two anaesthesia machines now. Also, we are adding a new building, a 5000 square
feet building to the existing hospital.
In this new building, we are going to have two theatres for surgical
operation. We are also going to have a dental section. We are going to have a
full functional laboratory, an X-ray section and equipment sections. We are just waiting for the completion of the
building. We did a ground breaking for the building last January. I came here
to continue the construction. Hopefully, by the end of the year, we will be
able to dedicate the extended clinic, that is mainly in honour of a girl that
was killed by a drunk driver in California, US, Kristina Chesterman. So the
clinic will be called “Kristina Chesterman Memorial Clinic”. So we are going to
work hand-in-hand. It is going to be Kristina Chesterman and Upon This Rock
Medical Centre. We are going to bring some level of synergy between the two
clinics. We will be doing it together and be able to provide extended services
to the community.
“Another project we are doing is called Aqua-ponic. It
is an agricultural project. We had two men that came from California to build
the aqua-ponic. They built it in my compound, using fish ponds to grow plants. They
started that project, completed it and the plants have started growing. The
plants include: cucumbers, tomatoes and so on. The fishes are growing. The
programme is working very well now. This coming December, the team will be
coming back and we want to make some additional planting.”
On what the team stand to benefit from the projects,
he said it is a voluntary work. “We do it for the sake of giving back to the
society and that is what God is looking out from us, even when we don’t know
that he is. There are people in the US, Europe and other continents that are
thinking of people that cannot help themselves. They are not biologically
related to us but they care. Their benefit is the fulfilment when someone says
‘God bless you’. It goes a long way.”
The man with a heart of gold, Umekwe, hails from Ozu
Abam in Arochukwu Local Government Area of Abia State, but lives in the United
States of America, where he has been living for more than 20 years. By
profession, he is a Civil Engineer and works for Maryland Highway
Administration.
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