Table of Contents
Seinye O.B. Lulu-Briggs does not wait for the government to fix what it has long neglected.
For more than two decades, the chairman of the O.B. Lulu-Briggs Foundation has been loading surgical teams onto boats and into buses and sending them into the creeks and riverine communities of the Niger Delta, places where the nearest hospital is a long journey away and the cost of care is enough to make most people turn back home.
The 45th edition of her foundation's free medical mission, held March 16 to March 20 in Ogu, Rivers State, produced the program's most striking numbers yet. In five days at the model primary healthcare center in Ogu/Bolo Local Government Area, her team of 109 volunteers and consultants treated 5,112 patients and performed 149 surgeries, everything from hernia repairs and appendectomies to hydrocelectomies and lipoma excisions, all at no cost to the people who needed them.
Dr. Seinye O.B. Lulu-Briggs, chairman of the foundation that bears her late husband's name, has built the medical mission program into one of the most sustained community health interventions in the Niger Delta. What began in 2005 at the Abonnema General Hospital, where about 2,600 patients were treated in the inaugural outreach, has grown steadily across two decades. The 45th edition, held March 16 to March 20 at the model primary healthcare center in Ogu/Bolo Local Government Area, brought 109 volunteers, consultants and support staff to a community that rarely sees specialist surgical care walk through its doors.
Of the 5,112 people treated, 3,439 were women and 1,673 were men. The surgical list ran long and complex: hernia repairs, appendectomies, lipoma excisions, hydrocelectomies and a range of other procedures that in urban centers would require appointments, insurance and out-of-pocket payments most rural Nigerians cannot afford. Here, they were free.
Lulu-Briggs said that reality, the cost barrier that causes people to delay or altogether avoid treatment, is the driving force behind the program. "Many Nigerians delay or avoid treatment due to high out-of-pocket costs," she said in remarks delivered at the mission's formal inauguration on March 18. Ogu/Bolo local government officials attended and publicly acknowledged the foundation's unbroken commitment to the area.
The medical team was led by Dr. Famba Famba Daniel and supported by 77 medical volunteers and 32 non-medical personnel who handled logistics, patient flow, pharmacy and follow-up care. Services ranged from general consultations, dental care and vision screening to diagnostics, physiotherapy and laboratory tests, all offered without charge from 7 a.m. each day.
The foundation started operations in 2001 with a program focused on elderly care in rural communities and has since expanded into education, scholarships, safe water projects and entrepreneurship support. The free medical mission is now its flagship program and its most visible. The Ogu outreach pushes the program's cumulative total past 195,000 beneficiaries, spread across Rivers State, Bayelsa State, Akwa Ibom State and Cross River State.
Dr. Lulu-Briggs credited the Rivers State Ministry of Health and the Rivers State Primary Health Care Management Board for their collaboration and thanked corporate partners and volunteers whose support makes the scale of each mission possible. Partner organizations at the Ogu outreach, including the African Women Lawyers Association, Rivers State Branch, have worked alongside the foundation for close to a decade.
The foundation said it will continue expanding its footprint across the Niger Delta and has signaled more missions ahead as part of its broader effort to close the gap between rural communities and the healthcare services they are legally entitled to but rarely able to access.
