It was the renowned Roman philosopher, Lucius Seneca, who said: “To suffer before it is necessary is to suffer more than it is necessary.” This explains the motive behind the initiative of The Lisa Demi Project, which seeks to end needless suffering through their operation.
Also, it is a fact that in our country some of the hospitals are mere consultation clinics and that in the area of modern healthcare delivery, our shortcomings as a country cry out in high decibels. This evinces the frequent medical tourism by our leaders.
However, the issue of the poor quality of our medical delivery or the extortionate trips by our leaders to go to Germany for an ailment as ordinary as catarrh is not the raison d’être of this piece. No. it is not. And neither is it about Mother Theresa now addressed as Saint Theresa; certainly no.
It is about a Nigerian Biomedical science student who felt the need to contribute her own widow’s mite to the society after she had discovered that the presence of a proper basic healthcare in Nigeria is lacking and that there is a need to educate and empower the youths for them to know and believe that it is not a death knell for them if they should discover that they have one disturbing disease or the other.
It will come as a surprise to anyone that our country has the second highest HIV epidemic in the world. In 2014 alone, it was reported that over 3.4 million people of our teeming population were living with HIV. Out of that figure, the statistics further revealed that 380 000 were children who are below the age of 14. These figures are the figures of 2014. We are now in 2016 and I can state categorically without seeing this year’s statistics that the figures of 2014 have become obsolete. We are likely to see an increase in the figures.
It is because of this huge number of people living with this health conditions that it became imperative for Lisa Demi to establish a Non Governmental Organisation to cater for the interest of young as well as the not too young adult who may been seen as “societal outcast” and called it: The Lisa Demi Project. This project is expected to assist people with HIV or STDs break that stigma surrounding them and their ailment.
According to Demi, persons who are living with HIV in this part of the world tend to face a multiplicity of problems. One is the lack of proper care to arrest or manage their health conditions due to lack of qualitative medical institutions. The other is the seraphic distancing of the society by way of stigmatization and lack of a proper education to manage their health issue.
In saner climes, it does not require a lot of effort for one diagnosed with HIV to go to the hospital or clinic to get treated without the nurse or the doctor baiting an eyelid but in our own part of the world, “our holier than thou attitude” has since beclouded our sense of judgment and we allow many persons to die in their ailments while they still live.
And to avoid that catastrophe, TLDP emerged with the hope of educating people because it is believed that sex education is a basic right which young people should have access to and which unfortunately they do not teach in the church or in the mosque. And maybe this is the reason why there are so many cases of sexual diseases and cases of rape in our society today because, according to Demi, a good or an effective sexual health education will curtail sexually risky behaviour and curb sexual exploits.
I may have gone too far in trying to make a semblance between the renowned and “extraordinary” Mother Theresa and the “little” Lisa Demi because the former did so many great works and it will be a gigantic task for anyone to try and walk in her paths, but we should not forget too that the “little work” Demi is doing in Nigeria is also important because the lives that will be touched and saved will not be of little importance. It was Mother Theresa who opined: “We can do no great things only small things with great love.”