Minister carries Cardio hope back to Freetown
Sierra Leone’s Minister of Foreign Affairs & International Cooperation, Dr. Samura M.W. Kamara, who represented President Ernest Bai Koroma who stayed in country to manage the Ebola emergency, returned from the US-Africa Summit last month with some very good news and about 30 pounds of extra baggage – the country’s first portable cardio-sonogram machine, a key instrument for diagnosing children with chronic heart disease.
Presented to the people of Sierra Leone on the sidelines of the historic meeting of African leaders in Washington, DC, the ultrasound device was a gift from New York businessman Michael Landau, whose diamond group and 5th C Foundation plans to introduce an innovative process for increasing public revenues from gems and improve the social impact of diamonds in Sierra Leone.
“Not only does private sector business have a responsibility to alleviate poverty,” Landau remarked, “investing in the healthy future of children is in everyone’s interest,” he told the Minister.
The cardio sonogram machine will become the property of the Sierra Leone government who will manage its application to local needs.
Dr Desmond Olu-Black, Freetown’s veteran cardiologist, hopes that he’ll be able to make good use of the machine, considering he is trained in ultrasound.
“I’ve been dreaming of this day, you know,” the German-educated cardiologist, one of only two in the country, stated in a telephone interview from Freetown. “Let it be known that I’ll use this on a pro-bono basis for all the children of Sierra Leone suffering from heart ailments,” Dr Olu-Black added. Olu-Black has impressed foreign hospitals for the accuracy of his diagnoses without any ultrasound or scanning equipment.
At the Westin Hotel in Washington’s stylish Georgetown, Mr Landau presented the medical equipment to Minister Kamara in the presence of Sierra Leone’s top diplomat to the US, Ambassador Stevens, along with Freetown businessman Adonis Abboud, who is well known in Sierra Leone for his local charity Pikin-Biznes, and who was essential in connecting Mr Landau and the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Abboud, the dean of the Consular Corp, founder of Sierra Leone’s popular Capital Radio, and former president and assistant governor of the Rotary Club of Freetown, has collaborated over the last decade with media specialist and Financial Times’ representative David Applefield in Paris to bring children from Sierra Leone to France for emergency open-heart surgery. Many say that no one has done more for the country’s youth than Abboud, Applefield has written in articles on public health initiatives in Africa.
Applefield’s interest in Sierra Leone has included US State Department sponsored training sessions for local journalists in Freetown and promoting the country in the Financial Times’ African reports. After he and Abboud explained the urgent need for heart equipment in Sierra Leone, Landau agreed to offer the nation its first cardio-sonogram machine, a Siemens Acuson Cypress, worth $25000 US.
Abboud, whose charity has sponsored students, built bridges, and supported President Koroma’s efforts to combat the current ebola outbreak, first met Applefield following an article he had advised a local paper to publish about a six-year old Freetown boy, Aboubacar Jallo, who was born with a hole in his heart, and was dying. The frail boy had only days to live, his parents were distraught with grief and Dr Olu-Black had all but given up.
Applefield advised the journalists that by highlighting the story of the boy “with the hole in his heart,” the paper would sensitize readers about the urgent realities in the country’s public health system. By telling the story of one poor family’s trauma to save their son, Applefield suggested, the press could do a lot more than by simply blaming the Health Minister as the local papers often do. Applefield also stated that the article should include a call to foreign embassies for help, and include direct quotes from the parents. “If you want readers to care, share with them emotions they can feel,” the media expert stated. “Who cannot feel empathy for the mother and father of Aboubacar Jallo?”
When the article ran the next day, local businessman Adonis Abboud was the first to reply. The British and French consular officials responded, and Brussels Airlines offered free plane tickets. Within days, Jallo had a passport, a visa to the EU, and was en route to Paris, accompanied by an Aviation without Borders escort. Applefield had set up the medical side with Méçénat Cardiaque at the Hospital Necker, where emergency open heart surgery was conducted and the boy’s heart was repaired. CNN World Report correspondent Khalil Gaye broadcast the story worldwide and local readers back home followed the boy’s progress by daily email updates.
Aboubacar Jallo was saved, and eight weeks later he returned to Freetown healthy to a hero’s welcome, greeted at Lungi Airport by 300 cheering supporters. Remarkably, in addition to a perfect heart, the boy had learned French! The Minister of Health received the family, and Abboud and Applefield, with the medical support of Dr. Olu-Black, set off to save others. But they needed the cardio-sonogram to determine which of the 150 kids on Dr. Black’s sick list needed emergency surgery, and who should travel first. Jallo, today at age 16, stands tall at over 6 feet, and continues his studies in Freetown.
Dr Olu-Black works in sparse conditions, with limited access to modern equipment, and a flood of patients, most of whom cannot afford to pay him. Pikin-Biznes began to assemble a list of children with heart conditions, and one by one Abboud continued to send sick kids from Freetown to Paris, where Applefield lives. Working with the renown La Chaine de l’Espoir, founded by one of France’s most celebrated heart surgeons, Alain Deloche, seven kids have now made the long trip, and all have survived. Ali Kamara, now 20, had his heart repaired at Paris’ state-of-the-art Hôpital Pompidou in 2008, and stayed for several months with Applefield’s family in Montreuil, where he attained a fondness for French cuisine. He dials Applefield from the streets of Freetown every once in awhile for news from his foster dad whom he calls “King David.” Applefield, who featured the story in a column in the International Herald Tribune, says “one day young Ali will run for president!”
All sorts of requests for medical help arrive everyday at Abboud’s office, and not many are turned away. In one case, had Pikin-Biznes not sent a 12 year girl to Applefield’s college pal, orthopedic surgeon Dr. Jeff Neustadt in Saint Petersberg, Florida, the girl’s left leg would have been amputated. Neustadt correctly diagnosed and treated her for bone infection, and not only saved her leg; within four days she was up and dancing. “Miracles,” Abboud likes to remind people, “are achieved when people are willing to pick up the phone or send an email to their best contacts. It’s all about our network and the willingness to use it.”
And now Minister Samura Kamara has brought home the cardio sonogram machine.
“I’m so grateful,” Dr Olu-Black told reporters “that the first ultrasound machine has finally arrived. Sierra Leone has been waiting for a decade for this.”
As the nation battles back the rising dangers of ebola, and the fears of further isolation from the outside world lurks, the rest of the nation’s public health efforts need reenforcing as well. Perhaps Landau’s 5th C Foundation comes at a precipitous moment, since its plan is to include the State along the entire value chain in the cutting, setting, polishing, branding and selling Sierra Leone diamonds ultimately in a upscale showroom in Manhattan. Landau’s group supplies the stones for Tiffany’s and Ivanka Trump, and states its willingness to set up shop in country, cutting stones in Sierra Leone and opening the country’s first duty-free diamond shop at Freetown’s international airport. At a time when most companies are shying away from all contact with the region, this news comes as a gust of fresh air.
“More money has to stay in the country. We want to give consumers a strong social reason for buying diamonds from Sierra Leone,” Landau told the Minister of Foreign Affairs at the brief Washington presentation. Landau promises to increase the government’s diamond revenues ten-fold. “And that means the country won’t have to rely on small gifts. And will be less dependent on foreign relief for both health and education.”
For the kids on Dr Olu-Black’s list, Landau’s gift is anything but small, and thanks to a portable machine and a few people who care, the US-Africa Summit was a huge success, and the Foreign Minister Kamara’s extra baggage was well worth it.
(APN, Africa Press Network)
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