Winner of the 2016 World Stroke Campaign Award for outstanding individual achievement, MacDonald Oguike of Acha Memorial Foundation in Nigeria, shares his story of becoming involved in stroke support.
What has inspired you to be involved
in stroke support?
My brother
and I lost my dad to stroke in 2015. After his death, we were inspired to
educate other people about stroke because we felt this was the best way to keep
his memory alive.
How did the project come about?
Before he
passed away, my dad’s stroke left him with a movement disability for seven
years. This could have been prevented during the early stages if we had more
education and awareness about stroke. After his death we heard so many stories
about people having the same experience with stroke in Nigeria. In many cases,
they ended up with a disability or died. We felt we could close this gap and
help people at the early stages. For us, strokes need to be prevented in the
first place. This was how the project “MasterStroke” began. From March to
November 2015, we started creating a project plan and decided to set up a non-profit
to drive the project goals.
What does stroke support look like in
your country?
Many SSOs focus on awareness creation. In Nigeria there
are about 11- 15 different SSOs. Each has a different agenda. At the World
Stroke Congress in 2016, some of these SSOs met and discussed the possibility
of coming together to form a national stroke body that would drive stroke
support activities across the country. This vision is currently being explored.
What have been the highs so far for
your project?
In 2016, the
MasterStroke project reached 45,530+ people with lifesaving education about
stroke prevention and treatment. In Nigeria this information about stroke
prevention helped many people act FAST, and find the right hospitals for proper
treatment and rehabilitation support. We also partnered with local doctors and
nurses to provide free blood pressure and sugar level checks to more than 3,500
Nigerians. Free counselling was provided to 85% of people diagnosed with
hypertension during the campaigns.
What has been the feedback from stroke
survivors to the project?
Feedback has
been good overall. Many people acknowledge the work we have done around
awareness and education. This said, some stroke survivors are looking for us to
provide additional support such as sponsorship of rehabilitation activities or
creation of a stroke survivors network to facilitate conversations about how their
recovery is going. With more funding, we will expand the services we offer to
stroke survivors.
What has been the response from others
– community, doctors, and politicians?
Response to
our work has been very positive. We partnered with local doctors and nurses to
provide free blood pressure and sugar level checks to local communities. In
2016, we also partnered with many local government politicians to roll out
awareness events in their local communities. Turn out to our events have been
large and people within the community we visited were very happy we showed up.To find out more about MacDonald's work please visit:
