Season of the Noma Children

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t is late afternoon on July 26, 2005, and Health Minister, Prof. Eyitayo Lambo is rounding off his three-day advocacy visit to three of the seven states of Nigeria’s North-West Geo-Political Zone. One of the health facilities that he must visit is the Noma Children’s Hospital, Sokoto. There is very little time, yet NCH is a must-see.

         

The minister decides on a flying visit, arriving about 6.30 p.m. As he goes through the hospital, however, he encounters a special case, a boy called Mohammed, who has been in the hospital for about three months. The Minister and entourage stop in their tracks, for although the boy looks a particularly bad case, the management say he is actually one of the success stories of the hospital.

When little Mohammed first arrived at Noma Children’s Hospital three months ago, very few people gave him any chance of survival. One side of his face was badly mangled; it was as though it had passed through a grater. And the left eye looked as if it would pop. Mohammed was as unwell as he could be, his ailment, a disease with an exotic sounding name, Noma. Like kwashiorkor, the root of the name is in Ghana.  

Medically, the condition is called Kancrum oris, an infection that attacks children with severe malnutrition, eating up the jaws and face. If not treated in time, it results in facial deformity and, or death. The deformity that results depends largely on how soon intervention starts.

Doctors at the hospital went to work on Mohammed; before long his condition improved, and he got a new lease of life. In his three months at NCH, however, he has had to undergo several rounds of reconstructive surgery and treatment with antibiotics to stop the infection that had almost killed him, and nutrients in drug and food forms to address the underlying cause of the infection. In due course, he will have to be operated on twice more to improve his facial appearance. It is only then that he will be considered fit to go home.

Noma Children’s Hospital has treated innumerable cases like Mohammed in its three decades of existence. The hospital was set up by the government of Sokoto State in collaboration with a German foundation. Patients are treated free of charge with subventions initially only from Sokoto State Government. Over the years, however, Sokoto State has reduced its subventions to the hospital and successfully asked for FG support since patients come from all over the country and from neighbouring nations.

German surgeons fly in to do the necessary surgery once a year when there are patients to treat. Thereafter, the hospital becomes a multi-purpose health facility until the following season when Noma children are the focus.

Part of the preparation for the Noma children treatment season is that all adult and non-Noma patients are discharged to make room for Noma children, who come from far and near.