Agatha Emeadi
as Veronica Ezeh, a psychiatric nurse and chief matron at Yaba Psychiatric Hospital supported mentally ill patients, and her wish to celebrate her six-year infantile cancer-victim son before he passes on to glory, led to the birth of Adicare Rehabilitation Home, a humanitarian organization. As the organization marks its first anniversary, success stories are already trailing the not-for-profit-making organization and it is all praises to God.
Growing up in Kwara and Niger states as a young nurse, where she witnessed the maltreatment meted out to mentally ill persons became her strong point and stood out in her memory like a sore finger. It became an added advantage that motivated her into what she is doing today. She said: “As a child, seeing people stoning the mentally challenged gave me sleepless nights and I started harbouring it in mind, wanting to do something about the situation as it became a burning passion for me to support street mentally challenged people. That stoning actually motivated me as a nurse to see where I can come in to help them because most mentally ill people are not all that dangerous.”
The same passion she developed for the mentally challenged persons is also the reason she chose to specialize in psychiatric nursing as a student and as the motivation rises in her, Mrs Ezeh made up her mind to do the best she can as a psychiatric nurse for these set of people who seem to have been abandoned by their families, society and friends. Then, as passion meets action, when she resumed at Yaba Psychiatric Hospital as a young nurse in 1999, a philanthropist, Dr Abraham who was bitten by the same bug impressed her the more.
“The week I resumed at Yaba Psychiatric Hospital, there came Dr Abraham, a philanthropist, who used to pick mentally ill patients from the streets to psychiatric hospitals and I was one of the young nurses chosen for the domiciliary services of picking these men and women from the streets. By the time we accessed the road towards the junction to pick the patients, I made up my mind that this man had paid the hospital bills and we should do our best to make the sick benefit from this. We went as far as Redeemed Camp and hand-picked some patients. At the end of the day, the hospital was able to reunite these patients with their families.”
That was the first case and on her own, Mrs Ezeh started to give out what she had to the destitute she encountered. “I started drawing near those in my locality. Gradually, I found that I could relate easily with them and a number of them took interest and responded to me whenever I asked them questions. If they agree, I provide water for them, clean them up and care for them. Interestingly, it got to a stage where anytime they see me passing by, some of them would want to hug me and onlookers would just wonder what’s going on.”
Ask Mrs Ezeh, is it true that people who take care of mentally-challenged patients think like them? “That is a fact, but as everything is trending and changing now, including the management of mental illness, it is no more like what we had before. A lot has changed. In the past when patients take the drugs, they usually look unkempt and dull. Today, all that has gone with the winds because things have changed, a wide range of professionals, including many bankers, commissioners and others are on the drugs and one would not even know.”
Again, she went down memory lane and told the breath-taking story of her infantile cancer son Adikackukwu. “In 2014, I took more interest and decided to work in the community; it required that I needed a Master’s degree in Public Health, which I accomplished at the College of Medicine, Ladoke Akintola University, Osogbo, in Osun State in 2016. During this period, I gave birth to a baby boy who had infantile cancer which was diagnosed when he was four years old. Governor Akinwunmi Ambode, the then governor of Lagos State supported us with his treatment in India; but unfortunately, he died while we were coming back from India. But just before he died, it was a week to his birthday, he requested I make a very big cake to celebrate his birthday with everybody and he passed on 30th August, 2018. Sadly, we mourned him and wondered how to celebrate him at this point.”
In one of my sober moments, the inspiration to celebrate him climaxed with the passion for caring for destitutes, they all rolled into one expression and gave birth to the initiative ‘Adicare Rehabilitation Home.’ Though Ezeh stated it categorically that she is not interested in cancer related issues, her passion is caring for people who are mentally ill, especially the destitute. As a registered organization, Eze uses her institute to celebrate the remembrance of her son Michelle Adikachukwu Ezeh.
Again she said: “We do a lot of things which include advocacy, social support, mercy section and the proper rehabilitation. I also create a number of information on pamphlets and collaborate it with awareness programmes in the communities, churches and other stakeholders. I also tried to do a survey on the number of mentally ill people in the community, but they are not stagnant, always on the move. We have not been able to collate the result yet. I have also collaborated with the youths in the community because of the increase in drug use. This year we had a programme shortly before the Coronavirus pandemic started, we have also collaborated with the Lagos State Ministry of Education to create awareness on the causes, prevention of mental illness. We collaborate with the Ministry to work with secondary schools and they gave us education district 5. This comprises four local government areas of Amuwo, Ojo, Ajeromi Ifelodun and Badagry.”
Her organization covered all of this within one month and they were able to attend to 60 Senior Secondary. “In every local government, we had a centre where students converged and we talked to them about the causes, prevention and act this as drama. There we were able to identify teenage drug and non-drug users and some of them owned up. Some owned up themselves and some who got involved through peer group pressure and family background”.
How is the organization funded? “There is no funding yet. I do this because of the passion and interest I personally have. This also motivated me to take another course on prevention. Now, as a certified drug preventive officer, I am into care, treatment and rehabilitation. There is already an ongoing building for the rehabilitation of destitutes situated at Alagbado because some have nowhere to go to after recovery. At Yaba, we have people who have been here for about 50 years and we cannot reach their families any more. They have been abandoned, with such cases, we have the occupational therapy section where they learn skills. When they get romantically close, we do not allow their marriages so as not replicate themselves and affect the children from such relationships.” Ezeh is riding on the wings of her passion because she is also a polyglot.