Since he was born March5, 2000, 13-year-old Uchenna Ekezie has lived with a genital deformity. He was born with what is described in medical parlance as maldeveloped external genitalia. In lay terms, he has no visible external male reproductive organs whatsoever. All he has to show is a rudimentary stump that is less than an inch long.
No thanks to this congenital abnormality, Uchenna can not urinate normally,. Worse still, his hopes of biologically fathering children in the future currently hang in the balance. Although Uchenna, who hails from the Ejike Ezekie family of Umuariam Obowo LGA of ImoState, has undergone series of major surgeries at the Federal Medical Centre, Umuahia, he requires a total of N4.5 million to undergo two more outstanding surgeries to complete his restoration. The first surgery is for correction of the continuous dripping of urine, while the second surgery is for elongation of the rudimentary stump.
It was gathered that in the attempt to to correct the birth defect, Uchenna suffered further damage in certain veins and arteries around his genital area. A medical evaluation by an IndianHospital in Abuja sent to FortisEscortsHospital, New delhi, India, from the Department of Surgery, Federal Medical Centre, QueenElizabethHospital, Umuahia, explained that Uchenna had the first surgery eight days after birth. In the report, signed by Dr. E.N. Agwu on behalf of Dr. G.U. Ugbam, the Chief Consultatnt Paediatric Surgeon, the procedure, known as posterior iliac osteotomy, was followed by the repair of the exomphalons at two months of age, and followed to months later by repair of epispadias. At four months of age, Uchenna had a herniotomy and bladder augmentation at six months. All surgeries wer carried out at the FMC, Umuahia.
Uchenna’s father, Celestine, told Good Health Weekly that efforts to seek financial assistance from the ImoState government has not yielded fruit. Speaking through the Queen of Peace Catholic Church, Umuariam, Obowo, LGA, Celestine observed that an estimated bill of $12,000 (about N2 million) has been issued by the hospital for the corrective surgery, but observed that an additional N2.5 million was being sought to cover medicals, return tickets, evaluations, tests and post surgeries and rehabilitation.
The Indian hospital is all set to correct this abnormality and restore Uchenna’s external genitalia to normal, but the obvious financial constraint is a stumbling block. Lamenting his son’s plight, Celestine appealed for urgent financial assiatance to enable the life-saving surgeries to commence. “We have no kobo or even a fraction of this amount.
Already we have spent all we have on his treatment and the family is broke. I even had to sell off all the cement bocks I moulded to build about four rooms, as well as the old car I was managing to provide for my family. We are now completely dependent on the response of generous Nigerians to out plea. Please help provide Uchenna with a better quality of life and offer us hope in humanity.”
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