Every Friday at Wellahealth, team members from across the country meet in a Zoom session for about one hour. This meeting is to catch up on the work done by various teams and team members across different parts of the country and sometimes different time zones.
The Second Friday of August, however, was different.
While I prepared for the meeting. I got a call from Ayomide, my partner, that a family next to her place of business had been waiting for the vehicle they had hired to take their son experiencing a crisis, who had just become a father the previous week, to a local hospital.
I volunteered, over the phone, to her, to drive them, myself, to the hospital.
It took a few minutes to get there only to learn that the family’s heir had passed. The vehicle, they had waited for so long, had come to take his remains to the morgue.
Only two years ago, the matriarch of that family had helped my family procure our wedding band. I was to inform her to do the same for my best friend, one of Healthsend’s early adopters, that day.
Death is hard. The finality! The eternal silence.
With medicine and the innovations in healthcare, more persons are saved from dying needlessly. At Wellahealth, in 2022 alone, we brought quality healthcare to over 150,000 Nigerians. At the end of August, we reached nearly 200,000 Nigerians with bespoke digital health products and grew our health partners to over 2,000.
This September, Wellahealth is on a mission to bring awareness to Sickle Cell Disease through one of its products – Healthsend. Thus helping Nigerians in the diaspora support families dealing with the disease whilst providing knowledge of this disease to all.
How does this work?
Throughout September 2023, we will share health-related content to bring awareness to sickle cell disease – a chronic disease affecting mostly Africans.
For each day of the week in September, Wellahealth team members and other well-meaning Nigerians will make audio-visual content and share it across all Healthsend’s social channels. Our goal is to bring the message of sickle cell warriors to more Nigerians, offer them hope, and get more Nigerians in the diaspora to send good health home to people living with sickle cell by pledging to support the sickle cell community.
How can you participate?
To participate in the Sickle Cell Awareness Campaign with Wellahealth and Healthsend, you can do the following:
- Follow Healthsend across all its social channels. You can find us here, here, here, and even here
- Engage (Like, Comment, Repost) with videos put out on all these channels
- Send us messages from your friends who are enjoying the content to encourage others to join the campaign
Simple right?
Standing at the front of our neighbour’s apartment, with one hand on my waist and the other on my head close to the car I drove down to help, I wondered.
I wondered what would have happened if their family’s driver had arrived as planned; I wondered if I had arrived earlier too perhaps the doctors might be able to try; I wondered if he had already passed the previous night and it was in the last grip on hope that made them request for a car and a driver.
I wondered about his 12-day-old daughter who brought so much joy to him on Monday of the same week as the entire street celebrated her naming with her family. I wondered at the fickleness of life and the daily struggles of people living with the disease.
So when Isaac, Ayomikun, Lois, Sarah, and I worked through the details of the Sickle Cell Awareness Campaign, I wondered what difference our efforts would make, how many people it would reach, and what hope it would bring.
Join us! When you pledge your support you help us take the message far and wide. A report will be shared with you at the end of the month.
