In what started like a melodramatic turn of events, Iyi Enu Mission Hospital, Ogidi, Onitsha has shown herself a track beater in the cause of upgrading the welfare of those people in our society who are living with Sickle Cell Disorder.
The Administrator of the said hospital which is run by the Anglican Church, Onitsha, Revd. Cannon Ikechukwu Okwuosa made this known during a 5 hours closed door meeting between the administrator and an entourage representing Association of People Living with Sickle cell Disorder led by The Coordinator, Aisha Maureen Edward. He disclosed that his establishment has been at the fore front of standing up for Sickle Cell patients. Besides the fact that the Mission Hospital has a couple of exceptional staff members who are Sickle Cell patients, they had a very promising young clergy, the Onitsha Diocese bishop’s own godson, who gave up the ghost at the prime of his life. An experience that devastated the whole Diocese, but almost did in the Bishop himself. She then revealed that he has received two proposals for a sickle cell special clinic in the big establishment, but has also gotten a proposal from a very distinguished female scientist who wants to start a full blown hematology department in Iyi Enu Mission school.
Revd. Okwuosa, a young husband and father and Hospital Management graduate of University of Leeds spoke firmly against whoever might be wrongly saying that his hospital is not nice to Sickle Cell patients has ulterior motives and shall face the full wrath of the law if caught. The ice breaker was when he told the Coordinator of the Association that his hospital will consider the written and spoken appeal by the association to write off the bill of a deceased 16 year old member of the association. The Hospital Administrator also affirmed that the parents of the deceased could come and pick up their deceased corpse and bury, as they don’t eat corpse.
The public may not be aware but the said 16 year old Miss Rowland had been one of the foundation members of the association and was almost concluding her NECO when she fell sick and from St Mary’s Hospital Ekwulobia, she was posted to Iyienu Mission Hospital where she gave up the ghost after two unsuccessful appendixectomy surgeries. ‘The hospital has many specialists doctors and did her best but she was already bad when she was posted as an emergency from St Mary’s Hospital Ekwulobia’, said the Revd Gentleman in defense of his hospital.
Speaking to some members of the media, the Coordinator of the Association happily informed the media that she has sheathed her sword of justice and has taken the white sweet scented lily offered by IyiEnu Mission Hospital. She expressed her gratitude in a special way to all gentlemen of the pen who have been, as she put it, ‘my own arsenal and weapon with which I fight the ills in the society as a Moral Crusader.’