Health & Wellness
A medical student taking health information to rural Nigeria
Victor Hosea Musa runs MED-AWARE, an initiative that has reached two communities and served 575 people with health care and medical information in Nigeria.
Two communities, 575 people served. That is the count so far for MED-AWARE, the initiative Victor Hosea Musa runs to improve access to quality health care and medical awareness across rural and underserved communities in Nigeria. The people served include children and people living with disabilities. The initiative also shares medical information with a growing online audience, "which will help improve medical decisions," he says.
He grew up in a semi-rural community. "I experienced firsthand the impact of limited access to these basic needs," he says. Someone in his family, he says, lost several pregnancies over six years to hemolytic disease of the newborn and fetus. Without access to proper health care services and knowledge, the family did not know what was happening. The result, he says, was that "a condition that would have been easily managed became a source of sorrow and put a burden on the entire family."
“Our sole aim is to ensure that health care services and information are easily accessible, available, and affordable to all, irrespective of location or socioeconomic status.”
Victor Hosea Musa
They did not know.
When he got into medical school and had access to that information, "I made it a point of duty to ensure that another family somewhere in a rural community doesn't pass through the same ordeal we did," he says. MED-AWARE started there. He is now a student at the University of Jos.
"My next move is to scale up my impact and my reach across more deserving communities," he says. The model he and his team want to take to those communities is a medical outreach to meet immediate health needs, a training workshop for primary healthcare centre staff and medical volunteers, and basic medical equipment to improve services in the community.