USA Africa Dialogue Series - Losing my Wife to Asthma is the most painful: We should not allow others to die?

In the early hours of Monday, July 4, 2016, I lost my wife- Amaka to Asthma. It was unexpected. I was devastated and I am yet to recover from the devastation and shock from her death. In her memory, we established the Amaka Chiwuike-Uba Foundation (ACUF) with a mission to improve the quality of life of people and the vision of a society with better breathing, better living, happier and united people. Primarily, the Foundation has an objective to create awareness on Asthma and also to provide direct support services to those with Asthma and their families.

Around the world, an estimated 1,000 people die daily from asthma-related conditions, with some 340 million affected by this common chronic disease. In Nigeria, over 15m people are currently suffering from asthma and this is projected to increase to 100m in 6 years' time. That is too many! Asthma affects people of all ages in all parts of the world. Symptoms can include significant difficulty in breathing, which makes ordinary activities extraordinarily hard. It affects daily like going to school, working at a job, looking after children or aging parents, exercising, or even just walking. There are high costs of poorly controlled asthma, including for acute treatment at the doctor, health centre or hospital, lost productivity of people with asthma or parents of children with asthma, and lost education of children who are too unwell to attend school. This amounts to billions of naira lost to society.

Amaka had dealt with asthma for nearly 20 years I lived with her and we have always believed we could beat it ourselves. Unfortunately, we could not beat her asthma that early morning. She died. Many have died before her and even many more have died after her death. Painfully, more would continue to die if we do not rise up to stem the tide. It has been just over two and a half years since her attack. You cannot imagine what it is like to lose the person you love to asthma. Tears are falling onto my keyboard as I type this. *Nothing is truly in your control until your asthma is back under control*. So please, remember my wife.

You can help us to create awareness and provide direct support services to those with asthma; hence, reduce the asthma prevalence, mortality, and morbidity. We should prevent more deaths! Your words, network, time and money can help us to achieve this task. You can also advocate on a local and national level for protections for people with asthma, reduce your contribution to air pollution, and spread awareness on your personal social media account.

 

We need your financial support to continue our projects/programmes/activities; most especially to organise flagship known as the *Amaka Chiwuike-Uba Annual National Asthma Conference*. The 2019 Conference with the theme: *Better Breathing, Better Living: The Role of the Environment and Governance* will be held on *18th July 2019 at Oaklands Hotel in Enugu*, Nigeria. For more information on the Conference, kindly visit the Conference website *www.acufasthmaconference.org.ng*.

 

You can make your donation, no matter how small or big it may be through this link *https://donation.acuf.org.ng/* or a direct bank transfer using the Foundation's bank account details below:

*Account Holder:                  Amaka Chiwuike-Uba Foundation (ACUF)*

*Bank Name:                          Guaranty Trust Bank Plc*

*Account Number:                0236341138*

 

Thank you

Chiwuike Uba
+234 803 309 5266

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAPQAT%2BLaQaJze%2BvBDBd%2BQ0cXc%3Dm_cD16drQ1h1QYCe335gQpzA%40mail.gmail.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.