Uzoamaka Uja

Nigerian nurse, non-profit founder, GHA course graduate

[November 2010]: I am Uzoamaka Uja, working in the southeastern part of my country, Nigeria. I am a professional nurse and have been practicing as a nurse for close to thirty years. I spent about twenty-six years working in the northern part of the country where my target audience were street children and destitute apart from my regular work as a bedside nurse in a specialist hospital. Presently, I work with the state ministry of health in the nursing services department.

After completion of my secondary education, I chose to become a nurse. It was a weird decision taken by me at that time. Today, however, I don’t regret it at all because my career in Nursing began smoothly and I was more than happy to grab the right opportunity of caring for the sick, displaced, confused persons and those at the terminal stages of different illnesses, especially stigmatized persons living with HIV/AIDS in rural communities, offering professional advises and ‘mending the broken hearted’.

The positive attitude to face hardship brought out the best in me, especially in regards to helping those at the end of life situations in my country and attending to children whose beautiful childhood’s memory were cut short by the death of their parents.

What I do precisely is to:

(1) Evolve a framework of standard solutions and sustainable approaches to addressing the challenges of HIV/AIDS and problems facing the less privileged, physically challenged, orphans and vulnerable children. This I achieved by reaching out to the target audience in rural communities and documenting their respective needs.
(2) Mobilizing the stake holders to participate in formal protection drive for the beneficiaries against all forms of discriminations, abuse, exploitations, denial or punishment based on the beneficiaries status and background
(3) Assisting communities mobilize, organize and react to problems/needs arising out of HIV/AIDS epidemic, assist communities to plan HIV/AIDS interventions that are relevant to their needs and aiding communities to implement and manage their HIV/AIDS plans.
(4) I cherish home based care so much. This I ensure by making sure my orphans are being cared for in family environments. I encourage family care because it is better than institutional care which has the increased risk of death, illness, language delay, socio-emotional disorders and personality dysfunction. There is also a greater likelihood that institutionalized children grow up disconnected from their culture, extended families and communities.

I have worked many years in many rural communities where HIV/AIDS, maternal/infant morbidity and mortality rates are high and poverty is written on every ones face. Communities where people are suffering and smiling.

I do this job because I want to provide emotional/material support and information about HIV/AIDS control and poverty reduction. I do these, because I am aware of the long term consequences for children who experience profound loss, grief, hopelessness, fear and anxiety which include psychosomatic disorders, chronic depression, learning disabilities, low esteem, low level of life skills and disturbed social behavior. My philosophy is that everybody should be fully brought up in the spirit of peace, dignity, tolerance, freedom, equality, solidarity and the fear of God.

The satisfying part of my job is the passion I have for children living or orphaned by HIV/AIDS and persons already in the end stages of AIDS. In the course of my job, I found out that children orphaned by AIDS suffer the most terrible emotional distress of losing one or two most important person in a child’s life, father and mother from an epidemic that is characterized by stigma and discrimination causing these children suffering that is unnecessary and unwarranted but with help can be stopped.

My joys know no bound, when I see these children smile, fill their stomachs with good food and go to school. I feel satisfied and fulfilled, when a child fixes her innocent eyes on me with smile, saying: Nne, dalu, imela, Chukwu gozie gi, meaning, (mother, thank you and God bless you). These innocent words coming out from the mouth of the dying, the neglected, the forgotten, the stigmatized are the satisfying part of my job.

Another satisfying part of my job is sitting beside a dying stigmatized, lonely, and terminally ill HIV/AIDS patient, offering psychosocial care, spiritual support and end of life care, until he or she takes the last breath on earth. I remember my days in nursing school; my teacher told us that the last sense to die is the sense of hearing. Therefore, to the lonely one on a dying bed, with no relation, I still talk deeply into his or her ear that I love her dearly and she or he is the most cherished person in my life. This gives me the satisfaction that the person is smiling onto death, as he or she takes last breath.

The worst experience about my job in these rural, hard to-reach communities is arriving too late due to bad roads or mobility to meet very ill persons die unattended to or where distant relatives of orphan children living with HIV/AIDS leave them to die unattended to, due to no problem of theirs, but HIV virus and parental death.

I almost gave up the ghost, the day a woman bled to death after child birth because she was HIV positive. She did not receive the necessary care/attention while having post partum hemorrhage. That day we arrived late. Most often HIV positive women of child bearing age and girls are denied access to their sexual reproductive rights, right to intimacy, right to love and enjoy pleasurable sexual rights. It grieves my heart. Finally, the worst is when I am handicapped due to lack of finance to attend to any one in desperate need of medication, one good meal or good drinking water.

I am an internet ‘addict’. I search the net a lot trying to get information and training opportunities that will help affect lives positively, care for persons living with HIV/AIDS. In one of those searches, I got the GHA website and what excited me at that time was the program in Accra, Ghana [in 2007] on Design, Management and Evaluation of Community-based HIV/AIDS Programs. That was the opportunity I had long waited for. I immediately made up my mind to attend. I sold off my bank stock shares and found myself in Accra, ready for the course, ready to utilize fully the least opportunity. It was great. The decision was not a mistake. I achieved more than I thought.

The most interesting topic  is leadership and management, especially understanding  keys to effective leadership in regards to transforming from  doing to leading, balancing motivation, accountability and most importantly handling conflict and negativity. This has really helped in my regular job as an administrative officer, assisting my communities in regards to their political crisis, instability and insecurity in my state and country generally.

The course also equipped me on better understanding of conducting needs assessment, problem analysis and a model on problem tree. It was fantastic. I also benefitted from data gathering techniques. I am now an expert strategic planner for my state in terms of investigation, analysis and assessment of non government projects. Many community projects that I designed and evaluated can now make informed, evidenced-based decisions about how to most efficiently and effectively achieve a measurable improvement over time. Many of them can now wheel out unhelpful interventions.

The unbelievable achievement that is sustaining my projects, especially my orphans and vulnerable children is the knowledge I got from Accra on proposal writing and designing individual projects. Prior to the course, I had never written a proposal. After the course, I attempted writing one and that proposal won me about $2500 (dollars). The money meant a lot to me and the target beneficiaries. Ever since I had written two other proposals and won.

Surprisingly, I wrote an international proposal to CORDAID, though I am yet to get a reply from them, but with GHA in-depth training on proposal writing, I am sure to win.

I founded Isaiah 58 House in 2001 and legally registered it in 2005. As the name implies, Isaiah 58 House is an HIV/AIDS/less privileged care project in Nigeria serving mostly rural communities.  It is an NGO that has genuine concern in fulfilling Isaiah 58, verse 7-11 of the Old Testament. “Share your food with the hungry and open your homes to the homeless poor. Give clothes to those who have nothing to wear, and do not refuse to help your own relatives . . . , you will be like a garden that has plenty of water, like a spring of water that never once dry.”

I started this NGO because in my communities numerous children, young people and women live in exceptional difficult conditions. Parents are at cross roads and the larger communities have no remedy for the teeming population of the less privileged and physically challenged in the society. There is increased number of orphans as a result of death from poverty and HIV/AIDS. Many children have been abandoned by indigent parents or caregivers who cannot take care of them, while others are ostracized for religious reasons, culture or for exercising their fundamental human rights. I started the NGO when I found out that many persons started off with dreams like us all. But today, they are down but not out. No thanks to HIV/AIDS/poverty. Today they are orphans and abandoned with no hope for the future, no parental care nor attention, only stigmatization, fear and uncertainty.

Isaiah 58 House therefore was set up to make substantial contributions towards the fight against HIV/AIDS; poverty, improve the health status of the poorest communities, through education, health and economic empowerment.

Our programs include reception, rehabilitation of OVC, less privileged, physically challenged, sponsorship for education, promoting vocational and life skills and home base care for ill people and their families.

Our vision is to see beyond  now  into a future—‘A society where all the  vulnerable children, orphans, less privileged, physically challenged, persons living with HIV/AIDS and down trodden are provided with ample opportunities, encouragement ,support and empowerment to make our world a better place.

In Isaiah 58 House, our target audiences are, AIDS orphans, persons living with HIV/AIDS, including children with AIDS and elderly guardians for orphans and persons with disabilities. It is made up of thirteen (13) permanent workers and nine (9) volunteers. Majority of members of Isaiah 58 House are doctors, nurses and other professionals. We have 203 orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) whose ages ranges from six months to 17 years and more than half of these children are HIV/AIDS positive. Eight visually impaired children, 3 deaf and dumb, two with cerebral palsy, one is a five years old sickler with fibro- dysplasia  progressive (congenital), 11 displaced adults, 4 geriatric persons without relatives, 17 year old orphan boy with hydrocephalus and tropical ulcer, two 16 year old orphan children with leprosy and 75 registered adults living with HIV/AIDS. Among the orphans and vulnerable children, only 125 are receiving full sponsorship ranging from education, health, shelter, nutrition clothing, legal  and psychosocial care/support. The rest are receiving partial sponsorship. This is not unconnected to lack of finance

Our program areas are;
(a) Basic education for orphans and vulnerable children.
(b) Broad community education on HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted infection
(c) Poverty alleviation through skill acquisition and economic empowerment.
(d) Conducive environment/rehabilitation
(e) Provision of good water supply.

My general work as the founder of the organization is to design schemes specifically that will provide full behavior change packages that transforms the beneficiaries into happy and contented members of the community. In the next two to ten years, I envisage provision of wider services to rural areas where about 80% of Nigerian population resides and to ensure that stigma around HIV services and opportunistic infections which causes death is reduced.

I will ensure access for orphans and vulnerable children to essential services, including education, health care, with registration and other services. More importantly, legal protection for orphans and vulnerable children where property-grabbing is rampant. This is to reduce the incidence of paternal relations chasing orphans away or selling properties after their parents’ death.

In the next couple of years, I want the organization to get political commitment and resources from local/ international leaders, to be able to care successfully our teeming orphans and vulnerable children, less privileged and physical challenged. To be able to provide affordable and effective interventions to save lives, prevent transmission of HIV/AIDS and to terminate poverty. We look forward to getting transport that will help us get to hard to reach areas and empower people to advocate for better care and resources.

In the process of trying to achieve our goals, the NGO had faced many challenges, the greatest of which is the ever increasing number of OVC, largely due to HIV/AIDS. This has put a strain on the material and financial resources. Also, persons living with HIV/AIDS were not worried about prevention but just wanted money for treatment. Transport was a major problem and a poor network; therefore it is difficult to access some areas. Shortage of infant-feeding milk and nappies for orphans whose mothers had died.

Sustainability of programs: The organization is failing to expand its operations or to increase the number of children being assisted, due to financial crisis and assisting OVC with clothes and toys. Getting more funds to train traditional birth attendants where more than 75% of our rural women deliver in unsafe environment with little or no knowledge of universal safety precautions.

THANK YOU.

Blind girls being cared for at Isaiah 58 House