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| Osepiribo Ben-Willie. |
Heritage Bank Plc has upped the ante of its support in the corporate social responsibility space by joining forces with Gail Sickle Initiative to rescue people living with sickle cell anaemia.
The
partnership with Gail Sickle Initiative, a non-profit organisation, according
to the Executive Director, Heritage Bank, Osepiribo Ben-Willie with its
back-to-school project support, is to ameliorate the burden of sickle cell
persons in Nigeria and to ensure that all affected persons live normal
pain-free lives.
She
stated it has become of concern to Heritage Bank to help alleviate the burden
as over 40million Nigerians are healthy carriers of the sickle cell gene,
whilst 150, 000 children are born with the disorder. This, according to her, is
by far the largest burden of sickle cell disorder around the world especially
Nigeria and most of these children die in childhood from lack of access to
early diagnosis and proper care.
“In
Heritage Bank, health is a priority, that is why we want to continue partnering
and supporting the NGO, Gail Sickle Initiative on welfare support, early
detection and improved treatment and proper care,” she said.
Ben-Willie
further affirmed that said that Heritage Bank in partnership with Gail Sickle
Initiative is synergizing to create significant awareness and support for
individuals affected by the disease.
Speaking
at an event, the convener of Gail Sickle Initiative, Oluwafemi Ajayi, disclosed
that with the support from Heritage Bank, the NGO has gone beyond its support
to her members whom she refers to as winning warriors, to supporting and
donating to people living with the sickle cell disease across the country.
According
to her, as an organisation that supplies supplements to winning warriors, the
Gail Sickle Initiative partnered with Heritage Bank and with the funds provided
went beyond the organisations’ members and reached out to other winning
warriors who have no parental support and to those in various hospital to give
them supplements and offset the bill of some who were unable to pay their
bills.
Ajayi
further stated that Sickle Cell disorder poses various challenges to the
carriers like the health challenge, stigmatisation, economic challenge amongst
others.
According
to her, the Gail Sickle Initiative focused on how to cover every aspect of
these challenges by birthing the Sicklepreneur, this aids the warriors to be
trained so they can acquire relevant skills and equip themselves to be
independent. Therefore, apart from trying to eradicate the sickle cell disease,
they ensure that the stigmatisation label on the warriors does not result in
depression for them.
She
encouraged other corporate organisations to learn from Heritage Bank’s sterling
example to the winning warriors by supporting the initiative and further
contributed towards the back-to-school project with relevant items donated.
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