By Abdullahi Jamaa
Ms. Jimia Abdul lost count of how many times she shed tears for young children suffering from cancer, a disease that throws her off balance.
“So many times….but I gather myself” she told The Plu while carefully enunciating her words with a soft voice of mercy.
For the last few years Jimia has grown to be a cancer warrior and a community savior as she puts nothing to chance in
extending a compassionate hand to parents of children with serious ailments like cancer.
Jimia is a kind person with a heart for helping people, admittedly her philanthropic personality emanates from Islamic tenets where humanity involves helping those in dire need. For her it doesn’t matter whether you are rich or poor.
Jimia’s passion for community service was triggered about two years ago when she met a helpless old mother nursing a sick baby suffering from a horrendous heart disease.
“I posted it on Facebook and my online campaign help raise funds for the baby, this was the beginning of a social media battle” she said
Since then Jimia has been putting her best foot forward to stand up for the community in raising awareness and in consolidating financial support for sick children from poor families.
Then came the story of baby Fadl Hamid, a one year old boy who succumbed to blood cancer while undergoing treatment in India.
Born to journalist Leyla Mohamed, Fadl’s story is a powerful indication of how parents and families of cancer patients struggle for specialized treatment in Kenya where access to primary healthcare is a nightmare.
Several months after the death of baby Fadl, Jimia vividly recalls the trouble and vexation the family had endured as they made efforts to seek specialized cancer treatment.
“It was a real lifetime challenge, the inability to treat the baby locally meant he has to be taken to India and that required huge amount of money”
For months baby Fadl remained at home instead of hospital; the family could not afford series of expensive chemotherapy required to stabilize him. The cost of chemotherapy in Kenya is too expensive and ranges between Sh. 12,000 to 200,000 depending on the kind of drug.
The burden was too huge to bear especially for a helpless mother who watched her lovely son-the apple of her eye- battling a monster like cancer on an ordinary bed.
“He was getting infections all the time” Leyla said “White bloods were too low and so most of the time he required blood transfusion”
Desperation and frustrations were raging as time lapsed so painfully and Fadl still remained at home while the cancer progressed.
But as Jimia narrates, Leyla’s resilience afforded a priceless smile and boundless prayers to support her son psychologically with a brimming hope to overcome the disease.
At this breaking point something has to be done and it has to be done immediately to support the family as the malevolent cancer continued to ravage the innocent body of Fadl.
Options were few and far yet urgent action was required to save Fadl who braved six months of suffering without medication.
So together with Leyla, Jimia launched an online campaign to raise funds.
“What do you do when you can’t afford the medical treatment for your own child? What do you do when what you can afford is only try to make your kid smile everyday with hopes that everything will be ok” Jimia posted on face book in a series of online campaign dubbed ‘Help save baby Fadl’
The two and their friends sustained the online campaign that have sent baby Fadl to india on 25th April 2016 for specialized treatment however baby Fadl passed away on May 27th, 2016.
The medical struggle with baby Fadl was a game changer that had instilled an insatiable desire to help poor families especially those who were beleaguered by cancer.
Jimia, Leyla and four other invigorated Muslim sisters are now making sure the boy’s spirit lives on and so they launched Fadlcarda Leukemia Foundation in memory of baby Fadl to kick off a national campaign that aims to help fund children with similar struggle.
The foundation is aptly named hoping to bring national attention towards cancer and its malicious destruction.
“Our aim is to have a legion of committed individuals in Kenya and around East Africa to educate the masses about Leukemia” reads a post on their website
The sisters say “No one fights alone’ keeping their heads up and using Fadl story to gear up for committed community service that seeks to address medical challenges for poor children.
“Our biggest mission is to help raise funds and awareness about cancer. Most of our people are helpless and poor with lack of knowledge about cancer” says Jimia.
