Monday 15 June 2015

The projects I am doing aims to give back to society –James Umekwe

James Umekwe



With a passion to improve the quality of health care system, Mr. James Ogbuka Umekwe and a team of medical experts from the United States have been giving low fee-charging medical services to people living in different communities in Abia State. In this interview with ADA DIKE, he speaks on why he is passionate about improving the living standard of Nigerians through his clinic, provision of boreholes and an agricultural programme.

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Health care system in Nigeria is seen as the privileged rights of the rich and the wealthy, that is why a Nigerian born US based engineer, Mr. James Ogbuka Umekwe, set up a medical centre in Ozu Abam, Arochukwu Local Government Area, “Upon This Rock Medical Center”, where people living in Abia State can be treated.
In December 2012, Umekwe brought to Nigeria a team of about 12 experts from the US and some of them were doctors, nurses, medical students who were in their final year. That was when the hospital “Upon This Rock Medical Center” was inaugurated. At the inauguration, the community people, the traditional rulers, the chiefs and everybody were in attendance. After the inauguration, they had their first medical mission for two weeks and it was successful.
According to him, “We were able to do a lot of surgeries. We took care of about 55 operations, hyena, fibroid, and glaucoma, just name it. We saw about 1,700 patients on that particular mission, so we did that for two weeks and went back to the US.
“Then in May/June 2013, it was so good that we have to come back again because there were some patients that we didn’t get to see their cases. So we came back again with about a team of 10 experts; three of them were medical students, four nurses and three doctors.  We did the same thing and had more than 55 surgeries. We saw more than 1,400 patients.
“Interestingly, from December 26, 2013 to January 14, 2014, we worked with a team of nine medical personnel; two medical doctors, nurses and medical students. We had 64 surgeries and we saw over 1,400, patients. The good thing about it is that, we have the support of the Federal Medical Centre (FMC) in Umuahia. Its director, Dr Abali Chukwu, is my good friend. The first time we came in 2012, he gave us the FMC theatre, so that was where we did all the major surgeries. We went to FMC with 13 patients, four of them were children for hernia and six women for fibroids and we had two with tumour and one had disfiguration of his legs,” he explained.
However, they had an interesting case last year. When they were in Port Harcourt, there was a young man who came to the hotel where they lodged and he had what is called AVS, he was involved in an accident and had a very big scar on his face and because the blood was flowing all the way into his brain, it kept expanding and getting bigger and bigger.  “We took him to “Upon This Rock Medical Centre” and the operation was successful.
“So these are some of the things we do. When we go for a medical mission, it’s not just coming to help the community but there are exchange of ideas, experience, knowledge and transfer of some technology that may help doctors. We had our fourth medical mission from March ending to April 8, 2014 and the seven man- team comprised a surgeon who is very good in vascular surgery; one neuropsychiatric, two nurses, two surgeons and one paramedic, who works with California Medical Service. The paramedic is well trained and he is also an instructor. So he conducted emergency medical response training to a team of medical doctors from FMC’s doctors in Umuahia on April 3 and 4.  We had all the teaching materials, in a way; it was part of re-training and continuous education for the doctors. We also had one agricultural consultant, an area that we are gradually delving into.
“We have an ambulance, so we are doing integrated emergency medical system which we basically called mobile clinic, just to persuade people not to think that ambulance is only for corpse. I have come to realise that when people get sick in the rural areas and villages in the midnight, sometimes, they die from the sickness that could be easily solved. Somebody can collapse into coma in the midnight and there are no medical attentions, the person can just die. Even ordinary malaria can kill somebody because there is no doctor, no medical services.  We have a team so that when people in the remote area of the community suddenly fall sick in the mid night, they can pick them up with the ambulance and bring them to the hospital. If it is something we cannot do right away, we take the person to the FMC,” Umekwe added.
Commenting on the fee they charge at the centre, he hinted that the first mission they did in 2012 was totally free. “Then, we realize that anything free doesn’t have valued as such. So we decided to charge N200.00 only for a card and all our surgeries across board costs N7,000, no matter the degree of the condition of the patient, so that is what we have done. We had a case where the same surgery that we would have done while we were here, but because it was the time for us to leave, we couldn’t see the patients and we send them to the FMC, where they were charged N70, 000.00 for the same operation we would have charged N7, 000.00. So we just put that little money to attach value to it.
 The whole place is always flooded. There is always a crowd. You can never see the last patient. We had had a crowd the day we left and sometimes, it hurts because we did not have enough time to treat them,” he said.
For a gigantic project like this one that is not profit-oriented always faces a financial challenge. Asked who the financiers of the medical centre are, Ogbuka said: “To be honest with you, I put down the seed money. Nobody gave me money to build the hospital; I built it with my own money. The help that I got was from the organization that provided medical supplies which we used. The organization is in the US, they gave me medical equipment and supplies that we are using. That was the lady who said, “if you build a clinic, I will help you”. So after building the clinic, she supplied the medical equipment that we are using.”
On who takes care of the bills of the medical team from the US, he says, “The doctors are the ones responsible for their fares. They voluntarily come here at their own expenses and they have been doing that since we started.”
He was able to convince the communities to accept the medical assistance because his philanthropic gesture has no political undertone, “And that is one of the reasons I never wanted to be involved in politics.  I built the hospital on my private land. I try as much as possible to stay away from politics.”
He registered the medical centre with the state government. He adds: “The Ogbuka Umekwe Hope Foundation is a fully registered non-government organization. The foundation is registered   in Abuja and Upon This Rock is operating under the foundation.”
It could be tasking for one to have a medical centre in Nigeria but lives in the US, so taking care of the patients when the team goes back to the US is a major challenge to him.  “It’s very tough to have a permanent doctor to live in a rural community and that is the problem. But, we engaged a doctor who came from Southern Sudan and stayed in Nigeria and took care of patients. He made his first visit on Monday, March 31, 2014. He came with his wife and worked for some time and went back to get some things and then come back, but because of the war in Sudan, he was unable to come right away. Right now, we are having doctors from FMC that come whenever we schedule surgeries. We also have doctors from FMC that help us in diabetic related cases. Presently, we are actively looking for a doctor to employ permanently until the Sudanese doctor comes back. One of the reasons why we have not got somebody is because we are looking for a surgeon that can do surgery and take care of other issues.”
There is a clinic in Ozu Abam set up by the government. Umekwe was asked whether the presence of that clinic is affecting the number of patients that visit his clinic and he says, “The government renovated the existing health centre and I was part of that renovation because I had a discussion with the Medical Director of Federal Medical Centre, Umuahia, Dr. Abali Chukwu. So we agreed that it would be good to have their presence which I volunteered to provide medical equipment for them. Doctors go that centre twice a week. We have doctors from FMC also that come to our clinic on a regular basis. So we are all working together for the good of the community.”
Commenting on the villagers’ reactions towards medical care, he said, “Basically, it has been good. When you do things, you don’t do it and expect everybody to react positively. We do it for the sake of God and also to give back to the community. But there have been a lot of positive reaction from the community.”
Concerning the new project he is handling presently in Abam, he said, “Apart from the medical missions that we have been having since December 2012, we added a new project, that is, doing water boreholes. So we want to make sure that there is clean drinking water for the community so we started doing boreholes. Last December, we did a borehole at Abam High School, Ozu Abam because we realised that the students usually cross the road to buy sachet water. Their safety is one of our concerns. So we decided to locate the borehole at Abam High School. Despite the fact that we wanted to make sure that the students have clean water, the school is my alma mater.
“We are also going to be locating one borehole in each village and we want to capture all the 28 villages in Abam, probably, in the next couple of years. That is one of the reasons I came to Nigeria. I will be going around and finding a location we can do the December borehole.”
How has the hospital fared? He was asked. “The hospital has been doing very well. A lot of things are happening. We have just received new equipment to receive full anaesthesia so that we can have full operation/full surgery because we have been doing local anaesthesia. We have two anaesthesia machines now. Also, we are adding a new building, a 5000 square feet building to the existing hospital.  In this new building, we are going to have two theatres for surgical operation. We are also going to have a dental section. We are going to have a full functional laboratory, an X-ray section and equipment sections.  We are just waiting for the completion of the building. We did a ground breaking for the building last January. I came here to continue the construction. Hopefully, by the end of the year, we will be able to dedicate the extended clinic, that is mainly in honour of a girl that was killed by a drunk driver in California, US, Kristina Chesterman. So the clinic will be called “Kristina Chesterman Memorial Clinic”. So we are going to work hand-in-hand. It is going to be Kristina Chesterman and Upon This Rock Medical Centre. We are going to bring some level of synergy between the two clinics. We will be doing it together and be able to provide extended services to the community.
“Another project we are doing is called Aqua-ponic. It is an agricultural project. We had two men that came from California to build the aqua-ponic. They built it in my compound, using fish ponds to grow plants. They started that project, completed it and the plants have started growing. The plants include: cucumbers, tomatoes and so on. The fishes are growing. The programme is working very well now. This coming December, the team will be coming back and we want to make some additional planting.”
On what the team stand to benefit from the projects, he said it is a voluntary work. “We do it for the sake of giving back to the society and that is what God is looking out from us, even when we don’t know that he is. There are people in the US, Europe and other continents that are thinking of people that cannot help themselves. They are not biologically related to us but they care. Their benefit is the fulfilment when someone says ‘God bless you’. It goes a long way.”
The man with a heart of gold, Umekwe, hails from Ozu Abam in Arochukwu Local Government Area of Abia State, but lives in the United States of America, where he has been living for more than 20 years. By profession, he is a Civil Engineer and works for Maryland Highway Administration.

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