By Precious Oluwadarasimi Ojo | Project Leader
Dear friends and partners,
Thank you for standing with Health Emergency Initiative as we begin this campaign to bring lifesaving emergency care to indigent children and mothers across Nigeria. Whether you have already given, shared this page, or are reading about our work for the first time, your attention matters. Behind every donation and every visit to this page is the possibility of another patient receiving urgent care when it cannot wait.
This is our first update since the campaign launched, and we want to use it to share what your support and the support we hope to build make possible.
A Story from the Field
Ezekiel’s story began on what should have been an ordinary day in Lagos, Nigeria.
He developed a fever at home, and like many families, his mother initially hoped it would pass with basic medication and rest. Instead, his condition worsened. Soon, his stomach began to swell, a worrying sign that something was seriously wrong.
Concerned about his condition, she rushed him to a public hospital in Iba. There, doctors explained that Ezekiel urgently needed surgery. But before anything could be done, payment had to be made.
Time quickly became a source of growing anxiety.
His mother left the hospital in search of help, reaching out to family members, friends, and anyone who might be able to support them. Despite her efforts, she returned without the funds needed for the procedure. The situation remained unchanged: without payment, the procedure could not begin.
It was the 24th of December.
While many families were preparing for the holiday season, Ezekiel’s family remained in the hospital, uncertain about what would happen next. Attempts were made to transfer him to other hospitals across Lagos, but each effort brought the same outcome: no available bed space meant no admission and no solution.
For the moment, only temporary medication could be provided to help manage his pain while they waited for another solution.
From December 24th to 27th, the uncertainty continued. At one point, Ezekiel’s mother had to leave the hospital briefly to care for her other children, leaving her eldest daughter behind to watch over her sick brother.
Then came a call from the hospital.
Her daughter explained that help had finally come and the hospital bills had been covered.
During one of its medical outreaches and interventions at the hospital, the Health Emergency Initiative (HEI) became aware of Ezekiel’s case. Following verification, HEI stepped in to support the cost of his urgent treatment, covering the surgery, medications, injections, and other essential aspects of his care. Payments were made directly to the hospital, helping remove the financial barrier delaying treatment.
With that support in place, Ezekiel’s surgery was carried out, and his treatment continued without interruption.
What had been days of uncertainty gradually became a path toward recovery.
Ezekiel remained in the hospital through his recovery period and was eventually discharged after receiving the care he needed.
Today, he is back home with his family and no longer living with the pain that once disrupted his daily life.
For his mother, the intervention meant more than financial support. It meant relief during a period of deep uncertainty and the reassurance that treatment could continue at a critical moment for her child.
When urgent care could not wait, HEI’s intervention helped move Ezekiel from crisis toward care.
What This Campaign Is For
Every day across Nigeria, treatable medical emergencies become tragedies because of the cost required upfront to access care. With fewer than one in ten Nigerians covered by health insurance, families arriving at a hospital in crisis are often asked to make an initial payment before treatment can begin. For an indigent family, a deposit of 15,000 to 20,000 (~$15) can be the difference between a child stabilising and a child deteriorating in a waiting area.
This campaign exists to close that gap for children and mothers, two of the most vulnerable groups in any emergency. Your gift of $10 covers urgent diagnostic tests so care can begin. $15 fully funds emergency treatment for a child with malaria or simple sepsis. $35 covers care for a newborn with sepsis or severe dehydration. $50 supports a mother facing preterm labour or post-surgical complications.
These are not estimates. They are HEI's verified per-case costs, built from nearly a decade of working alongside hospital social workers in 95 partner hospitals across 16 Nigerian states.
The Wider Work Continues
While this campaign was built, HEI's emergency care work has not paused. Across our network of partner hospitals, our team continues to verify and fund cases referred by medical social workers, which is the same model this campaign supports.
A few markers of the larger picture your support contributes to:
These numbers are not the point. The point is that each one represents a patient whose treatment began because someone- a donor, a hospital social worker, a partner refused to let a payment gap become a death sentence.
Where the Campaign Stands
In all honesty, since this campaign launched about four months ago, we’ve only raised $30 toward our $35,000 goal. We are very hopeful and driven to reach our goal because of the numerous lives that reaching our goal can save.
$35,000 translates to emergency care for hundreds of children and mothers. At an average per-case cost of roughly $35, a fully funded campaign means HEI can respond to a referral from a partner hospital within hours, without waiting to fundraise while a patient's condition worsens. That speed is the difference this fund is designed to protect.
We are sharing this update not because the numbers are where we want them to be, but because the work behind the campaign continues every day, and because we believe the people who land on this page deserve to understand both the urgency and the model.
How You Can Help - Beyond Donating
Three concrete ways to move this campaign forward:
A Word of Thanks
To the three donors who have already given to this campaign, thank you. You are the first. You have placed the first bricks in something we intend to build.
To everyone reading this update, thank you for caring enough to look. Emergency care access for indigent Nigerians is not a problem that resolves itself, and it is not a problem any one organisation solves alone. It moves forward when enough people decide that a child's survival should not depend on whether her family can find 15,000 (~$10) in an emergency.
We will share another update in the coming months with continued progress from the field. In the meantime, we are grateful for your trust and your willingness to walk this path with us.
With gratitude,
Precious Oluwadarasimi Ojo
Project Leader
By Charity Iwu | Project Leader
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