As you read this, if help does not come the way of a three-year-old girl with a heart challenge, she would be dead in a fortnight! And how much is needed for the surgery? A paltry N2 million! This is a far cry from what our moneybags splash on their inanities.

He may not be the richest Nigerian football export, but remains one of the most kind-hearted if not the first among his peers on this reckoning.
The chairman of Kanu Heart Foundation (KHF) and Super Eagles’ captain, Ambassador Nwankwo Kanu, remains committed to the management of heart-related challenges in the country.

Having gone through this experience some years ago, Kanu feels and knows the associated challenges. In fact, his passage through this channel informed his institution of the non-governmental organization (KHF), which has already handled 287 cases and spent more than N500 million. As at now, there are 2000 patients in need of attention amid lack of funds.
The Foundation is one of the most invaluable NGOs operating silently in the country. Indigent and hapless citizens who contact the outfit receive treatment in specialist hospitals across the globe. The gesture, initially meant for children, now admits people of all ages because of increasing demand. Beyond Kanu’s prodigious interventionist role, funds are also obtained from kind-hearted individuals and socially-responsible corporate bodies.

Everyone knows the deep intervention of soccer idol Nwankwo Kanu in bringing succour to our brothers and sisters in the country who have heart-related medical exigencies. It is on record that if not for the involvement of this footballer, who is the most successful and decorated player on the continent, several people with heart challenges would have passed on.
Penultimate Thursday, Globacom and KHF initiated a joint venture partnership on management of heart diseases. At the ceremony to mark the commencement of this unique collaborative gesture, there was an outpouring of emotions from some of the beneficiaries and members of the robust audience who were touched by the profundity of testimonies. There was a prospect at the event that the country will in the future, if not now, throw up more Nigerians with Kanu’s realistic philanthropic disposition so that humanity can transcend rudimentary medical challenges.

From the Glo-KHF JVP launch testaments, the second national carrier is involved in this heart-touching programme because of its corporate vision of positively impacting on the lives of Nigerians through the transformation of their circumstances employing telecoms in its belief in the true Nigerian spirit of triumph in all endeavours.

According to the Group Chief Operating Officer of Globacom Mobile, Mr. Mohammed Jameel, “we are proud and delighted to be associated with this life-saving Foundation in its compassionate goal. We commend our true patriot, Nwankwo Kanu, for initiating this laudable project and urge other corporate organizations to support him in realizing this vision,” Jameel said.
The Globacom-Kanu Nwankwo initiative involves a fund drive spearheaded by the telecoms giant. Going by the terms of the partnership, Glo subscribers who wish to support the synergy stand to win prizes such as television sets, handsets, refrigerators, microwave ovens, laptops, generators and other consolation prizes.

Globacom will keep a log of all subscribers that participate and will use the database of all the numbers for the computer-aided raffle draw. The revenue generated from this promotion will be subjected to mandatory-cum-statutory 5% VAT and 2.3% National Communications Communication (NCC) levy, while KHF will get N30 per SMS which is about 60 per cent of the total revenue from the schedule. The initiative will run only on Globacom network from now till December 31, 2008. Of course, there will be regular and monthly reconciliation of accounts while settlement takes place before the end of the programme.

It is astounding the way we trivialize critical issues that border on our humanity. As Kanu noted, if it were some frolics, one and all would have come to show off their loot! Why are we like this? No compassion, no brotherliness, no empathy! Nobody cares for the other. Everyone carries on as if the next person is a log! How did we get here? Is it our character, poverty of the mind or just nonchalance?
In civilized climes, rich people come to the help of the needy by setting up foundations, trusts and allied institutions that dwell on communal welfare. Until we learn to become our brother’s keeper, the beck and call of the Kanus of this world would be falling on deaf Nigerian ears.

The two organizations said at a recent press conference that the partnership hopes to raise funds for heart surgeries. In raising the funds, the telecoms firm has developed a special coded number “33640” for SMS by those who wish to support the effort. Any Glo Mobile subscriber can send SMS (save, any character even a blank message) to “33640” and an immediate response from Glo follows. A sum of N50 will be deducted instantly from the subscriber’s air-time.

This special platform exclusively developed for this humanitarian course by Globacom, Nigerians’ preferred network, can handle more than 800 SMS messages per second. It is developed with latest technology to support messages from more than 18 million Glo subscribers nationwide.
In his remarks at the heart-touching publicity ceremony, Jameel said the second national carrier was a compassionate and truly Nigerian corporate citizen, stressing that this was responsible for the company’s collaboration with the Foundation in addressing heart-related challenges.

“Let me say that we are proud and delighted to be associated with this life-saving Foundation in its compassionate goal. We commend our patriot and Super Eagles’ captain, Nwankwo Kanu, who is also the chairman of the Foundation, for initiating this laudable project and ask other corporate institutions and philanthropic Nigerians to support him in realizing this vision,” Jameel said.

The Foundation’s coordinator and trustee, Deacon Abia Onyebuchi, said at the moment that there were an outstanding 2000 cases waiting for funds to undertake heart surgery. He said there was a critical case of a child who would die in the next two weeks if there was no immediate intervention for treatment.
According to the Foundation, each open heart surgery requires at least N2 million to be carried out. “It even costs far more if a transplant is involved and usually it is difficult to even get a free heart. In some congenital or acquired cases, as the Foundation has experienced, some victims’ hearts irreparably damaged,” Deacon Onyebuchi stated.

Nwankwo in his remarks expressed confidence in the capacity of Glo to drive this project and thanked Globacom Chairman, Dr. Mike Adenuga, Jr. for his immense contributions to sports development particularly and humanity generally. “He is a father to us footballers,” Kanu said, adding that he had from outset been a part of the Glo family.
In 2002 when the foundation did its pilot edition in Enugu by flying in surgeons from abroad, 10 of the patients survived and three unfortunately could not make it. Between then and now, the Foundation has sponsored 300 open heart surgeries of sufferers from all parts of the country. The beneficiaries were flown either to India, Israel, UK or USA for treatment.
Meanwhile, the association is shopping for medical outlets overseas where the cost could be cheaper so that many more patients could be accommodated. The first surgery carried out by the Foundation cost N6 million and the lucky beneficiary was Baby Enitan Ebisola, who is now grown up and was present at the kick-off ceremony of the Glo-KHF joint venture.

The Foundation has also concluded plans to build a cardio-vascular centre that will cost N450 million on completion once funds are sourced. The centre is billed to provide free heart tests for visitors.
Fellow Nigerians, let us be our brother’s keeper: respond now by buying into Kanu’s great vision and rescue mission. Help save a child through your immeasurable support. In the circumstance, it is the thoughtfulness that counts, not the statistic. And always remember the Glo SMS channel: “33640.” Just any message or none at all, but send! P-l-e-a-s-e…

It may interest you to know that an old woman went all the way from Oyingbo to the Ikeja office of the Foundation at a fare of N600 to donate N200! Yet another woman without any prompting on two occasions donated N2 million, which was immediately utilized and a life saved. You, too, should be the next benefactor, even if it is your widow’s mite. As they say, nothing can be too small or too big in these hearty matters.
One can finally pray and hope that God will continue to inspire visionaries like Dr. Mike Adenuga, Jr. and Nwankwo Kanu as they play their pivotal roles in uplifting humanity in multifarious ways.