By Jane Echewodo

Two little girls suffering from a congenital heart condition, and the other, an orphan, a victim of HIV/AIDS, weekend, received a Touching Lives relief package from Airtel.

They both featured in the sixth episode of the telecommunication’s Touching Lives show’s third season.

Six-year-old Hannah Enakrakpor was born with a heart defect that makes her breathless. But to keep her alive, the parents said they must pay for an expensive heart surgery in India.

The other child, nine-year-old girl, currently lives with her indigent 80-year-old grandmother in Ikare Akoko, Ondo State. Both of her parents died when she was only six years old and in 2014, after she fell ill, doctors discovered she had HIV.

“When we found her, she had a massively swollen head and unexplained sores on her body. She wasn’t going to school,” said Olubiyi Love Ogundipe, a social worker at St Joviacs, a non-governmental organisation devoted to orphans and widows. Taiwo’s condition was “shocking,” he added.

With the assistance of teachers in the local primary school and doctors at the nearby Federal Medical Centre, Owo, she received treatment for the sores and enormous bumps on her head. The next stage of her treatment, said Ogundipe, would be to get her placed on Anti-Retroviral Therapy, ART.

Aside from that, “we have been grappling with the question of who will take care of her after her grandmother passes on,” he said.

Airtel paid for a corrective surgery for Hannah Enakrakpor and created a scholarship worth N1 million for the HIV patient. The telecom company will also pay her grandmother’s rent for two years.

“We hope that Touching Lives will inspire well-to-do Nigerians to help the disadvantaged and support the work of NGOs like St Joviacs,” said Airtel in a statement.