By Chioma Obinna

Dr Gbemisola Boyede is a Consultant Neurodevelopmental Paediatrician and the founder and Chief Executive Officer of a nonprofit organisation, Ask ThePaediatricians Foundation.

The Foundation started as a Facebook community concerned with bringing medical care to children, especially those without access to proper medical care. It now has over 545,000 members on Facebook and more than 2,000 volunteers.

Recently, Gbemisola who is known for her passion for good health and welfare of all children, particularly, the indigent and vulnerable children in under-served areas through her Foundation held a nationwide medical outreach across Nigeria. She spoke to  Chioma  Obinna on the nationwide programme, why she is bent on fighting child mortality, partnership with Facebook, and other sundry issues. Excerpts:

What inspired you to set up the ATP Foundation?

As a Paediatrician, a specialist doctor who takes care of the health of children, I am passionate about the good health and survival of children generally and especially those living in Sub-Saharan Africa with high mortality statistics. As a Paediatrician, I am sad about the fact that our child mortality statistics in Nigeria is high and most of these deaths are highly preventable often due to easily treatable diseases through already available and cost-effective interventions. I realised the gap is ignorance. I decided to contribute my quota by providing evidence-based health information to mothers and other caregivers of our children by starting ‘Ask ThePaediatricians’ Facebook group in July 2015.

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Though ATP was successful in reaching those online; I realized again that the majority of those needing the information is poor and are not online. Most do not have access to smartphones and the internet. So, we need to go and meet them where they are. That is why we started doing community medical outreaches targeted to indigent children in underserved communities in Nigeria. After our first outreach to Makoko in October 2016, we realised to be able to do this in the long run, we need to become a formal entity. Ask ThePaediatricians Foundation was then officially registered with the Nigerian Corporate Affairs Commission in July 2017 as non-profits incorporated trustees. So, in a nutshell, I am driven by the passion to see our children live and not die from unnecessary and preventable deaths.

How did you get the vision to set up the ATP Foundation?

In the course of my practice, I have seen mothers make decisions that have had a negative impact on the health of their children due to either lack of information or misinformation. I know many if not all, mums love their children and want the very best for them at all times. Unfortunately, many times mothers go to fellow mothers to ask for advice and information about the health of their children. Some of these experienced mums are at times also not very well-informed and sincerely give advice which at times is wrong with serious consequences. My burden and concern for the mothers and fathers also who are seeking sincere advice births the idea of ‘Ask ThePaediatricians’ providing online health education for mothers and caregivers of our children. While the paediatricians may not know it all, we are still the authorities when it comes to the health of children aged 0-18 years.

Many paediatricians are too busy especially in developing countries like Nigeria where we have less than a thousand of paediatrician for over 40  million children to educate mothers one- on -one or answer the unending questions. Ask ThePaediatricians helps bridge this gap by addressing the common child health issues mums must know about and also address their questions and concerns from a child health professional viewpoint.

With time, Ask The Paediatricians grew and I realised we need to reach other parents who are not on social media and who cannot even see a Paediatrician on a regular day…those in the remote and indigent communities and that is what gave birth to our Ask The Paediatricians community medical outreach under the auspices of Ask The Paediatricians Foundation registered as a charity in Nigeria.

It started as a Facebook group, what was the progression like?

I have alluded to how we moved from a Facebook group to a Foundation as a way to reach more people. ATP, as we are fondly called actually grew really quickly on her own and I found myself always trying to catch up. We recently had our social impact analysis done and this is attached for more information. We currently have over 545,000 members on our Facebook group and more than 2000 volunteers (Outreach and Moderators). We now have State Chapters and are currently present in 33 states and the FCT Abuja.

Nationwide Children’s Day Community Medical Outreach

Ask ThePaediatricians Foundation has been having Community medical outreaches since October 2016 when we had our first outreach in Makoko, Lagos as part of our contribution to reducing child mortality in Nigeria especially among indigent children in under-served communities in Nigeria. In the last three years, we have progressively increased the coverage of our outreaches beyond Lagos to five other south-western states and FCT, Abuja in October 2018. This year May/June 2019, we were able to fulfil our dream of going nationwide for the first time as part of our 2019 Children’s Day Celebrations which held in 35 communities in 33 states of the country and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.

The feedback from the communities reached and their community leaders were quite amazing. At these outreaches, we had 1,450 ATP volunteers and reached 17,096 children nationwide. This was done in the local language some times in some communities. We conducted health talk on child health promotion including talks on nutrition and dental care. Opportunities were provided for questions and answers. In our outreaches, we offer a nutritional status assessment of the children and mass deworming. The children also see the paediatricians and other medical doctors and the dentists for free consultations. We also had outreach laboratory service doing rapid malaria tests and in some States HIV and Hepatitis B screen. We also give out free drugs from the Pharmacy team where they received free drugs, mostly essential drugs. Children with conditions that could not be handled on the field were given referral letters to the closest hospitals.

We are currently doing a pilot project of monthly ATP Mobile Clinics in four communities;   Makoko, Epe, Ijegun and Oworo which started in March 2019. We go to these communities monthly and run free mobile clinics. We are trying to work out if it is feasible and sustainable. We also want to know if that will bring more impact on the health statistics and quality of life of children in those communities than our current model which is just one-point visit with no follow-up.

Apart from our offline community outreaches, we also do a lot of online programmes including ATP LIVE every Saturday which is a video live stream programme on topical child health issues with opportunity for parents to ask and get answers live and direct from our Paediatricians. We do weekly group discussions as well which is more of a webinar as well on our Facebook group. We answer health questions daily on our Facebook group on diverse health questions by professionals. We have also recently created an ATP Mobile app to serve the same purpose which will be officially launched during our 4th Anniversary next week.

Apart from health issues, we are also concerned about the welfare of children generally. So we renovated a block of two classrooms including the provision of furniture and stationeries for a Primary School in Mancha, Edu Local Government Area of Kwara State which was commissioned in January 2018. This was after we came across the viral picture of children in that school sitting and sleeping on a dirty muddy floor under a tree to learn. This was posted by Youth Corps member serving in the school on Facebook.

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We were moved to make a difference for those children. We also raised N500, 000 for the Annual Christmas Lunch organised by Community of Sant’Egidio Lagos for the indigent children of Makoko. This was to make sure the children had a wonderful meal and fun on Christmas day. We also pay school fees of some children at Goshen Home Orphanage, Akute which is our adopted orphanage. We are fully committed not only to health but the welfare of indigent children.

Are there further plans for expansion?

Definitely, we plan to reach more communities in Nigeria and outside Nigeria. We have a lot of members in other countries like Ghana, Kenya, UK, US etc. We specially want to reach more children especially in Sub-Saharan Africa where the majority of preventable deaths of children occur.

How does Facebook’s FCLP Grant aid your work?

Facebook via the Facebook Community Leadership Programme has been a great blessing to us. We were able to reach more communities and children nation-wide largely due to the funding we got from FCLP. Our ATP Outreach bus which has been very useful for our mobile clinics was also purchased from the FCLP funds. We have also developed the ATP Mobile App which is already being tested to be launched soon. In other words, FCLP has accelerated our progress and impact.

Do you have a standing partnership with Facebook?

Facebook is the platform that has brought ATP to the limelight. We started as a Facebook group and almost all members and volunteers who became offline volunteers and support first came as Facebook group members. We have also accelerated with the FCLP support. So I will like to say yes Facebook is a very worthy partner.

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