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Friend,
Imagine a life where people run away from you.
When I was a child in Nigeria, my face was severely disfigured by noma, a preventable, but neglected, tropical disease. For years, I faced stigma due to these scars, hindering me from associating with people in my community and forcing me to live in isolation. I endured multiple attempts to reconfigure my face—but they all failed.
I was referred to Sokoto Noma Hospital, where Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) staff provide care without charge. It is the only hospital in the world dedicated entirely to noma patients. There, I had my first successful plastic surgery. Over the next 20 years, I underwent five more rounds of surgery that helped me gain the confidence to attend school to get my diploma in health information management. Now, I work at Sokoto Noma Hospital as an MSF hygiene officer, helping fellow noma survivors.
Noma affects hundreds of thousands of people around the world. Yet this disease is largely ignored. Since 2014, MSF surgical teams have carried out 1,152 surgeries on 801 patients with surgical needs due to noma. MSF is not only providing free, lifesaving treatment for noma, but we are also calling on the global community to dedicate more attention to it.
This deadly, chronically-neglected disease often affects people living in poverty, especially in isolated communities in Africa and Asia. Although this disease is both preventable and treatable, up to 90 percent of people infected die without treatment. Survivors like myself are left with severe facial disfigurement that can make it hard to eat, speak, see, or breathe.
MSF is working to change that by uplifting the voices of noma survivors like mine, while also providing specialized care for this neglected disease.
This email was sent from the U.S. section of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), an international independent medical humanitarian organization that delivers emergency aid to people affected by armed conflict, epidemics, natural and man-made disasters, and exclusion from health care.
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