Twelve-month old Electra Omatsone bubbles with life when she was brought to Nigerian Tribune’s Correspondent’s Office in Warri last week. Her underdeveloped stature betrayed something is eating her up from within. With sunken eyes that looked like someone who has been on medicated glasses, Electra’s frail and gaunt frame is a shadow of what her age mates are.
Oblivion of what is eating her up, Electra coughed intermittently, a copious symptom of what doctors at the University of Benin Teaching Hospital (UBTH) described as univentricular heart condition!
Consultant from the Pediatric Cardiology Clinic of the Department of Child Health at UBTH in charge of the patient, Professor Wilson Sadoh, in a signed ‘To Whom it May Concern’ document dated February 21, 2017, described the condition as a life-threatening congenital heart decease.
It was gathered that little Electra was diagnosed of the disease when she was five months old and since then, she has been surviving on medical check-ups and drugs that cost about N25,000 monthly.
Professor Sadoh, in the letter, said the “definitive treatment for this condition is cardiac surgery” that would cost the family N10 million in India or Europe.
In a chat with the mother of the patient, Princess Omatsone, an unemployed National Certificate for Education (NCE) holder, in Warri, she said her husband and family could not afford the cost of the proposed surgery.
“My husband is a welder and has no permanent job. He only hustles around to eke a living for us. Although our family members have been there for us, the N10 million is hard for us to come by,” she narrated.
The 29-year-old mother of two, who hails from Benin but married to an Itsekiri, disclosed in tears that she would not want her daughter’s bright future to eclipse and therefore needs the help of magnanimous Nigerians.
A savings account has been opened at FirstBank Plc on behalf of Electra by leaders of the Church of Christ, Nigeria, Warri branch, which Mr and Mrs Omatsone are members.
Details of the account are opened on behalf of Electra is: ACCOUNT NAME: CHURCH OF CHRIST, NIGERIA.
ACCOUNT NUMBER: 3115720946 (SAVINGS).
BANK: FIRSTBANK PLC.
Mrs Omatsone, mother of the patient, can be reached through: 07056863681 or her husband’s 08053841067.