Sometimes you take a small step, make a small gesture and then later you realize that you’re part of something much bigger than you ever imagined.
This is happening to us with what is going on in Nigeria right now.
If you are new to this blog, I am talking about an initiative we took a few months ago. We organized a fundraiser to train medical professionals in teaching Fertility Awareness Based Methods (FABMs). It was in response to an email from Dr. Nkechi Asogwa, a doctor in Lagos who was trying to counter the aggressive push by big pharma of dangerous contraceptives in her country. If the contraceptive campaign in Africa is news to you and don’t know what the impact is, read this report about how Depo Provera is affecting women in Africa, or read this blog or this blog.
In the past few months I have kept you posted on some of the results of our initiative, including that eight medical professionals are being trained to teach FABMs, and that our documentary, “Natural Love Stories,” was shown to several thousands of people in Lagos with amazing results. In fact, here is what Dr. Asogwa wrote to me only two weeks ago following a training:
“They viewed your video and were all impressed. I think it’s such a well-done documentary. Each time we show the video it has positively impacted all our participants and made it easy to explain the FABM methods.”
Then last week, I got a surprise. Anna Halpine, the founder and CEO of FEMM, which is one of our FABMs partners for this, copied me in an email to Dr. Asogwa: she was giving her a scholarship for two Nigerian doctors to attend a medical consultant training in Rome in March!
Here is why this is very exciting: the medical consultant training is extremely important for Nigeria because infertility in that country is rampant with 25% of couples suffering from it[i]. Medical consultants trained by Creighton or FEMM offer alternatives to in-vitro fertilization (IVF), an expensive and invasive method of achieving a pregnancy. These methods work as well or better than IVF and don’t have the health and ethical issues.
Following this training, women in the cities of Lagos and Benin will have another option to get help. Then in the fall of 2017, FEMM is working on a medical training in Nigeria. We’re incredibly grateful to them for this (if you would like to help them too: donate here).
Here is more from Dr. Asogwa, concerning her plans for next year:
“In 2017 we hope to take these trainings to different parts of Nigeria with a view to reaching about 500,000 people/participants.
In addition we are targeting to give an introductory course to 5th year and final year medical students on the natural methods. These students are our volunteers. They are 300 in number. The natural methods are not taught in medical schools and when they are mentioned, they are taught as something obsolete.”
To me, this sure sounds like Christmas. And like something big is happening in Nigeria.
Reference
[i] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3163656/#b1-ijwh-3-265
