An Insight into the Non-profit Business Side of Paediatrics in Nigeria: Ask The Paediatricians Foundation Case study

This article was written by Dr Gbemisola Boyede, a Consultant Neurodevelopmental Paediatrician and Founder/CEO of Ask The Paediatricians Foundation.

According to the World Health Organisation, globally estimated 5.3 million children under age five died in 2018–roughly half of those deaths occurred in sub-Saharan Africa. Nigeria is a major contributor these child deaths in sub-Saharan Africa. According to the Nigeria Demographic Health Survey (NDHS, 2018), the under-five mortality rate in Nigeria is 132 per 1,000 live births meaning that 1 in 8 Nigerian children never reach the age of 5. One Nigerian child under-5 years of age dies every minute. Most of childhood deaths occur in rural and indigent communities in Nigeria who lack access to good health-care facilities.

I am an accidental non-profit social entrepreneur. I started Ask The Paediatricians Foundation out of pure passion to meet a gap that I identified was critical to the goal of reducing the catastrophic statistics of child deaths in Nigeria. As a Paediatrician, just like all my colleagues; we are all very burdened about reducing the mortality figures in children. It is even more appalling that 75% of these deaths are caused by illnesses that are easily preventable and treatable with simple and low cost technologies we already have with us. Then I suddenly realised the gap – we have left out of all the discussions and conferences a very critical and important stakeholders – the parents and caregivers of our children. We professionals discuss and deliberate amongst ourselves on how to reduce these deaths without carrying along the parents who have to implement all the child survival strategies. It is this quest to address the gap and engage with these very important stakeholders that led me into the world of Paediatrics non-profit.

Ask The Paediatricians Foundation started as a Facebook group on the 20^th July 2015 and we just celebrated our 5^th Anniversary this month. It was just a group to engage with parents and caregivers of children; offering free health education and information to parents. The goal is to promote child health intelligence. We believe that though it is just one mother or child at a time who through knowledge will not add to the horrible statistics, it is something. It may not be a big difference in the national data; but for that mother; it is 100% save! The response was astonishing and the group grew dramatically. Many parents began to give feedback on how they are taking better of their children and correcting errors they made earlier with previous children. Many are encouraged and were doing exclusive breastfeeding. In other words; they are now engaging with the child survival strategies and dropping all the wrong belief and myths including delayed presentation in hospitals which are the contributing factors to child deaths.

By our first anniversary in 2016; we realised that not all mothers and parents have mobile phones or internet access. This birthed the need to reach the offline communities and we launched our medical outreaches targeted primarily to indigent communities who will not necessarily have access to Paediatricians and specialists. We did our first outreach in Makoko in 2016 and reached over 1000 children with more than 200 volunteers of medical and nom-medical professionals; most of whom came to ATP Facebook group as beneficiaries. We continued to grow dramatically on Facebook and did another outreach to Ijegun in May 2017. Then it became obvious we need to be formal group and we became registered as incorporated trustees July 2017.

Ask The Paediatricians Foundation extended her reach outside Lagos to Mancha in Kwara State in January 2018. We renovated a block of 2 classrooms and did medical outreach at LGEA Primary School. ATP became international with our selection as one of the 115 communities from 46 countries to be part of the Facebook Community Leadership Programme in September 2018! This came with a grant award of $50,000 for our community projects. With this funding, we started our nationwide outreaches. ATP State Chapters were formed and we currently have 40 State and zonal chapters in Nigeria. In May/June 2019; 1450 ATP volunteers reached nearly 18,000 children in 33 States of Nigeria. We also reached over 22,000 Nigerian students in 77 schools nationwide in October 2019 with ATP goes to schools community outreaches.

ATP is reaching thousands of families daily through our online platforms that have expanded to include the ATP mobile app and ATP Clinics (Telemediciane); and offline community outreaches. We are recipient of many awards including our most recent Social Media for Social Goods Africa 20020 (Health) category. We are indeed looking forward to that day when “no child will die from preventable cause of deaths in Nigeria and globally”

I will conclude with my top 7 tips for those interested in running a health non-profit in Nigeria:

1. Vision: You need to start with a vision of what you need to achieve! Have a mission statement and remind yourself of what you are trying to achieve all the time.
2. Be Focused and accountable: keep to what you plan to achieve and avoid distractions. Seek first to fulfil the mission and recognition will follow.
3. Passion: Be very passionate about what you do as this is what will keep you going when you are discouraged along the lonely journey of running a non-profit.
4. Convert your beneficiaries to volunteers: ATP runs on volunteers and has no salaried staff.  Most of our volunteers were once beneficiaries who are also now giving back to others. This keeps your overhead cost low.
5. Learn always: as an accidental non-profit founder, I learn a lot about from courses on Acumen, Philanthropy University on social entrepreneurship, fundraising ect. Learn and apply your knowledge!
6. Be innovative: Don’t have just one idea. Be willing and ready to try new things and ideas all the time.
7. Have a team: Don’t try to do it all alone. Having a team who are loyal and committed to the vision is key to successfully running a non-profit.

Dr Gbemisola Boyede is a Consultant Neurodevelopmental Paediatrician and Founder/CEO of Ask The Paediatricians Foundation. She started Ask The Paediatricians Foundation (ATP) which is a registered non-profit in Nigeria as a Facebook Group in July 2015 out of her passion as a Paediatrician to reduce deaths of children from preventable causes; often rooted in ignorance of parents and caregivers. Dr Gbemisola Boyede obtained her MBBS degree from the College of Medicine of the University of Lagos in 2002 and completed residency training in General Paediatrics at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital in 2010. Dr Boyede additionally had a subspecialty fellowship and Masters of Philosophy degree in Developmental Paediatrics in 2015 obtained as a Fellow of the African Paediatric Fellowship Programme of the University of Cape Town, South Africa. She is a recipient of multiple awards including one of the inaugural fellows of the Facebook Community Leadership Programme in 2018.