- Welcome to the spring 2002, Texas A&M Architecture For Health lecture series.

And I'm glad to see a lot of people today in the chilly day.

So today we have two outstanding speakers, but first of all, let me introduce the Mr. Bill Bill is the executive committee member of the Center for Health System and Design (indistinct).

He had over 40 years of experience in designing the healthcare facilities.

So he also the liaison between the center for health system and design and the industry member for high extends for health industry advisory council for the center for health system design.

So Bill's gonna introduce the two outstanding speakers today.

- Great, thank you.

You know, it's a real pleasure and real honor today for me to make these introductions.

I first looked them up on their VOOM Foundation website, and I would encourage all of you to look at that website.

It's very well done.

It's very informative and it'll get you all fired up for working in the future.

Today's speakers we have two from the organization, Vincent U. Ohaju and Shawn Andaya-Pullium.

Good, I gotta thumbs up on that.

(audience laughs) That's every Aggie's dream is to get a thumbs up.

Dr. Ohaju is the Founder and Chairman of VOOM.

He is the Trauma Medical Director at CHI St. Joseph Health Care System, here in Bryan, Texas.

But prior to that, he was Associate Chief for the Division of Surgery and Neuromuscular Services at Essentia Health, formerly St. Mary's Medical Center in Duluth, Minnesota He's all too familiar with this kind of weather having come from Duluth.

He received his medical degree from the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth Texas, and he completed his internship in residency in General Surgery at the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth, and fellowships in Surgical Critical Care and Trauma Surgery at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston.

He is board certified in both general surgery and surgical critical care.

Dr. Ohaju is a fellow of both the American College of Surgeons and the American College of Osteopathic Surgeons.

He has been in the principal investigator for several clinical trials.

He serves as Adjunct Assistant Professor for the University of Minnesota Medical School, Duluth where he received the honor of Community Physician of the year in 2007 and 2011.

Dr. Ohaju has been honored by his peers and received "Top-Doctor" for seven consecutive years prior to his relocation to Texas.

There's something that could be said, I'm sure about that.

But he was one step ahead of him, obviously.

So, and we're thrilled that he's here.

The award is presented by the Duluth Superior Magazine, local publication.

He's a Clinical Assistant Professor at Texas A&M University since 2015.

He is Paul Harris fellow and past Vice President of the Lake Superior Medical Society.

He served on a Minnesota Committee on Trauma, and currently with the Society of Critical Care Medicine, where he serves as a Consultant for Fundamental Critical Care Support course.

He is a member of Eastern Association for The Surgery of Trauma and serves on the Board of Trustees at The College of St. Scholastica Duluth, Minnesota.

He's a member of several nonprofit organizations, including Silver Creek Institute and a founding member of VOOM Foundation.

Shawn Andaya-Pullium is the Executive Director, Foundation Development and Sustainability.

After serving two years as a volunteer fundraiser for VOOM Foundation, the VOOM Foundation Board of Directors hired Shawn Andaya-Pullium as the first Executive Director, Foundation Development and Sustainability in January of 2017.

A graduate of Texas A&M University.

Big thumbs up.

Shawn has spent the past 25 years in a nonprofit fundraising development and the past 18 years at fundraising for healthcare.

Her experience in capital campaigns, major gifts, corporate partnerships and international partnerships.

Recently, she exceeded a capital goal of the $8 million by raising 25 million to complete the state of the art Emergency & Trauma Center at CHI St. Joseph Health in Bryan, Texas where she met Dr. Vincent Ohaju.

Shawn is married to Al Pulliam and has two son's AJ and Trey.

With that I'd please welcome our speakers.

(audience clapping) - Thank you very much.

Thank you guys so much for having us here.

Well, VOOM Foundation is always glad to get out and tell our story, but also to be here on the campus of Texas A&M one of the greatest institutions in the world, and especially to be around young people and students.

So we're gonna start the presentation out with a question.

Can you imagine living in a country of 200 million in population with no sustainable open heart program?

That's comparable to, you know, the US has about 330 million, so it makes up about two thirds of the US.

There's not one place...

In 2013, there was not one single place in the entire country that you can get open heart surgery.

In this town here in Bryan-College Station of a population of about 275.

I think there's three to four places that you can actually have open heart surgery.

So, you can imagine the hopelessness that a country would have with their healthcare system, if you have these problems or a heart problem, part of the reason is because there's quite a few barriers to healthcare in third world countries.

The first one being financial, most healthcare even in this country is an affordable if you just have a regular job, but in a country where 50% of the country is living in poverty, it becomes a huge barrier to accessing healthcare.

That means 100 million people in Nigeria are living under the poverty line.

Transportation locations of hospitals, the hospitals we're currently partnering with are giant hospital.

They're 1,000 bed and they're in big cities.

Lots of folks live in the rurals and transportation because I've been on several missions there.

Transportation in Nigeria, in some cities it's pretty good, but out in the rurals it's still difficult to get into the big cities, to be able to see a doctor get your medications and so forth.

The road conditions are very tough.

Some of the things you see on TV is still how it is there in the rural areas.

And then the locations of hospitals are in big cities.

So access to them is just very difficult.

If you're someone that's living out in the rural areas.

There's no health system, systems do not work collaboratively and there's no electronic record system.

So you know, when you're here in America, your patient records kind of follow you everywhere you go.

You can get your patient records sent to another hospital to another doctor to wherever you want it to go, just by the click of button.

Unfortunately there, your patient records don't follow you.

They do follow you if you have your folder.

So basically there are a few places that are trying to get electronic record systems, but in a country of 200 million a few of them have electronic record systems, but nobody else does, how does that function for you?

So that seems to be a big, huge problem.

I remember one time we were trying to get a patient here into the US, a young girl, she was five or six years old, 'cause we found a program for her to come here and get heart surgery.

And it literally took us two months to get her records here.

Just so Dell's children could actually look at the records and as the doctors can assess her to see if she was qualified to actually come into a country, it took us that long.

So think about this and if you have heart problems and it takes that long for you to you know, get your records here and get them looked at time is just going by when you know, you could get critical and not survive.

The lack of health insurance.

Unfortunately there's not a big huge health insurance system there.

There is some health insurance, but it's a cash society.

So basically if you don't have cash and you can't go pay for your right then and there there's not a credit card type situation there it's cash.

So if you can imagine living in a cash society, 50% of the country, which means a 100 million people are living in poverty.

How many people actually have cash to be able to go, you know, pay for a surgery or pay for medication or pay for a hospitals day or pay for scans or pay for radiation?

So it's a huge, huge problem with no lack of insurance and then also, you know, the country being so poor.

and then there's lack of qualified professionals.

I can say firsthand.

they have medical schools there.

I'll just use this for an example, several of the hospitals that we do open heart surgery.

They have cardiothoracic surgeons there on their campus in their thousand bed hospital that cannot do a case without us.

So when we leave the country, they see patients and they just wait for us to come back.

So there's no real sustainable open heart program there in the country.

I'm gonna tell you a real quick patient story about Hammed Afolabi.

This is actually happened in September.

Because of the pandemic we went twice in 2001 we squeezed two missions in September and December.

This one happened in September, but Hammed came to us and he's an indigent.

And he came to us and he wanted to have, he needed open heart surgery.

We sat down, our surgeons visited with him and they told him that he would need some follow up care.

Basically he would need to take some medicine and a prescription drug for probably the rest of his life.

And then also see a cardiologist regularly.

So we were offering free surgery free 'cause we assemble a team that actually goes there.

And Mr. Afolabi told us that he could not have surgery.

And we were like okay, we're offering you free surgery.

You have to have this surgery, you're gonna die eventually.

Why are you opting out?

Basically he was opting out because he couldn't figure out how to feed his family.

During the recovery time, after his surgery, his wife sold biscuits to supplement his income.

He was a petty cab driver.

That's how he took care of his family.

They had three children, they lived in the airport, he had this heart problem, but he couldn't figure out how he was gonna be able to... His decision was if I do this follow up care, I can't feed my family.

And I can't feed my family during the time that I'm actually trying to recover after surgery.

So none of this sat well with any of us, of course, all of us, the medical team that was actually there.

This is his team, that's his surgeon there.

Dr. McNeil standing behind him, he's from Austin, Texas.

This is his team.

So the team decided we all collectively got together and we decided that we were gonna help this man, because we just couldn't leave the country without helping him.

Basically what we did is we found a cardiologist that would see him for free there in the country.

We found someone that would pay for his prescriptions there in the country.

VOOM Foundation actually picked up the tab for his family for one year to survive while he recovered.

We found a donor here in the US, a church out of New Braunfels that supported Aggie ties by the way that supported his surgery.

So we found like a whole bunch of pieces that would support him through this after our departure.

And he's doing very, very well.

In 2016, the world health organization rank Nigeria, 187 outta 191 countries for health recently, it's been upgraded to 163 that's good news.

Nigeria is one six of the population of the entire continent of Africa 95% of the 200 million live without access to essential healthcare.

Almost 50% of the entire population lives under the poverty level, we've talked about that already.

The infant mortality is the third highest in the world.

And life expectancy is the age 55 I think in the us it's 70.

- [Dr. Vincent Ohaju] About 74 years in the US, yes.

- As a result of all these barriers and problems that we've just discussed, VOOM Foundation was created in 2004 by Dr. Vincent Ohaju to address the problems.

So I'm gonna hand it over to him at this point (laughs) and he's gonna take the next slides.

- Thank you.

Yeah, without going into the specifics of what led to the establishment of VOOM Foundation, I will encourage you to visit our website and there will be a story behind the story.

So I think to understand VOOM Foundation will not be complete without understanding the why behind VOOM Foundation.

So I would refer you to do the website for that.

All right, so we started the organization and this was our mission statement.

Okay, we will strive to provide impartial, sustainable healthcare programs, dedicated to quality first with a particular interest in supporting the underprivileged and underserved.

That's addressing the need, that is addressing the 100 million people who basically lived their lives by faith, all right.

All right, so it was important that...

So in 2008, we left United States with a group to go to Nigeria to try to figure out exactly the depth of the problem in the country.

So it became very obvious during that visit that was not a single facility with the ability to perform open heart surgery like Shawn mentioned.

And this time I was living in Duluth, Minnesota, and it was 125000 population out of which there were two centers where you could do open heart surgery.

Frankly, anybody that knows anything about essential health in Duluth Minnesota is a level one trauma center now, so that facility can do just about anything except the transplant.

And that's yet the town of 125,000 and yet a country about at the time 167 million did not have a single place where somebody could have open heart surgery, which means then that if you couldn't afford, if you were one of the 5% of the population who can afford to fly to India or United Kingdom or come to United States, you basically succumbed to the disease when medical management failed.

And we also noticed that there was not even an adequate critical care.

So what do I mean by that?

To give you an example, the facility that we had visited, one of the facilities that we visited was 1000 bed teaching hospital.

In that teaching hospital there was not a single functional mechanical ventilator, not one.

I want you to imagine that for a second.

I mean, I'm in a 200 bed hospital here.

We have 35 ICU beds and I'm sure they have a whole lot more than 35 ventilators in the hospital because all the PACU beds can function as an ICU if we get into a mass casualty situation, every single one of the 15 ORs can function as an ICU bed because they're all equipped to do so.

And yet the hospital of a 1,000 beds didn't have single functional mechanical ventilator.

So what happened to the patient that showed up there with say pneumonia and had respiratory failure, they just needed to be supported for a few days while antibiotics did his job?

What happened to the people that went to major surgery they couldn't come off the anesthesia machine?

They just needed to be supported for a day or two.

So those patients obviously didn't do well.

There were really no emergency healthcare system.

I mean, everybody knows how to get help here, everybody knows 911.

You knows 911 because if you call 911 you don't have to worry about who's gonna show up because you know, a whole system is available to you just by dialing 911 that gets you an ambulance, which takes you to the...

Which traffics part of the way for you.

You get to the hospital, you don't have to look for your surgeons or doctors to get to the cath lab.

Nobody asks whether you have money or not, because after all, somebody else may be calling 911 who don't even know anything about your financial situation, but the whole system is open to you.

There was no 911 in Nigeria there's still is no 911 in Nigeria.

And even if for some magic you are to create one now there are no good roads to get you to the hospital even if somehow magically speaking, you can create access to fly somebody into a hospital, bypassing the treacherous roads.

We don't have any system in the country.

Would you believe that a patient will have to find his own surgeon?

When he gets to the hospital we'll have to go out and purchase all the supplies that is needed for their surgery.

You wouldn't even be able to get past the registration desk if you didn't have a way of showing how your care was gonna be funded.

So in 2011, we went back 'cause you know, the big question is this how do you eat a big elephant, right?

We decided we're gonna take one bite at a time.

So our very first bite was a nonclinical trip in 2011 where we decided okay, let's go over there and address some of the educational needs.

What drove that was that during the course of our visit in 2008 I heard about a cardiologist, frankly, who was a resident here in United States, very naturally and nevertheless took his family on a visit and had a cardiac arrest and was taken to one of the teaching hospitals.

They didn't even have as much as an EKG machine so nobody could figure out, you know, how to take care of him.

They didn't even know how to do basic CPR.

So this individual died.

So we decided to take a take up a course.

And one of the courses that we brought was the Fundamental Critical Care Support from the Society of Critical Care Medicine and the Advanced Cardiac Life Support and the basic life support, do your CPR course.

And then also the Rural Trauma Team Development Course, we did that in 2011.

We started also 2011 sending container loads of consumables and equipments to try to create an in infrastructure that will support future missions.

We returned again in 2012 and work with the one of the teaching hospitals in the country to create a two bedded ICU, sorry, two bed operation room theaters, four bed ICU, and four bedded step down unit and those ICU beds obviously had functional ventilators that wasn't there before.

So in 2013, we VOOM launched the very first mission to reopen the open heart surgery.

And since that time have been doing two missions every year.

So the VOOM Foundation, as you can imagine is basically driven by volunteers.

This is 100% of our team members are volunteers who have not paid staff except one actually.

So each medical mission really is about 15 on the average people that go on the missions and specialty is pretty vast.

Our organization has grown.

And as you can imagine, in fact, our upcoming main mission will require about 25 people going on that mission because we're gonna be supporting three different institutions in that very mission.

So each mission usually lasts about two to three weeks.

Yeah, okay.

And again, our focus course remains the same.

We want to take care of the indigent patients.

Those patients that cannot afford to go overseas.

Now, every life is precious, whether indigent or non-indigenous.

So every so often when we go on medical missions, we can help but care also for even people who can afford to pay but don't have the time to get to overseas to get healthcare.

So our goal usually is about 10 to 12 patients per week when we go on medical missions, all right.

So, it isn't just going over there and operating.

And if you really look at our vision, that includes just training the locals because we know that part of our being able to sustain what it is that we're trying to do in Nigeria and create a major impact would obviously be to make sure that locals are being trained because we can forever continue to go over there, just operating everything will fall apart.

When you know our volunteers fatigue.

If we are not able to get locals, to be able to do this procedures and be able to take care of their own.

And I'm happy to tell you though, that at least at this time, the nursing staff are well trained.

They can take care of patients in the ICU.

You know, unlike before, when I mentioned to you that there was no functional critical care, I dare to say that there are probably major many centers in the country now since 2013, that have functional ICUs, that people have been trained to be able to care for you know, patients that have severe illnesses.

So, it's something that is very rewarding to know that it is not possible now for somebody you should die because they have acute respiratory failure because there will be places now that can care for you now.

It's not the same thing with surgeon because whereas it doesn't take four or five years to train a nurse to be able to do, to train an intensivist even to be able to care for somebody in the intensive care unit.

It'll take several years to train a surgeon because that's you know, you have to be able to transfer skills.

Example is the fact that in this country, by the time you finish your general surgery residency, you've logged about a thousand major cases that you did, not that you watched somebody do.

And if we are doing 10 to 12 cases each mission, and we're doing two missions a year, that means whoever we're trying to train in Nigeria is being exposed to less than 50 cases a year is gonna be impossible to train that individual in five years to be able to do.

So really and truly being able to do multiple missions, being able to create situations that allow us to be able to serve a lot more than 10 to 15 patients per week will increase the number of patients that are served, increase the exposure for the surgeons or surgeons that are being trained and ultimately help us to be able to sustain that, all right?

So, this is just to illustrate some of the challenges that we have, okay?

So blood banking, that's a big challenge in Nigeria, blood banking.

So, one of our missions in 2018 we operated on somebody who developed a bleeding problem required re-operation that required blood transmission.

You know 'cause you have blood loss, you're gonna replace blood.

Unfortunately for this patient, the blood bank was not functioning because they were on strike.

So our team members stepped up to the plate and have to donate blood.

Those of them that they have blood that matches this individual.

So we can give one blood 'cause can't bank it.

So you'll be get it from him, this individual and go give it to the patient, but obviously we not able to get enough blood to be able to satisfy that.

Just think about this one for a minute.

I cannot count how many cases been involved as a trauma surgeon in this country where we have done massive transfusion on patients.

It's not unusual during massive transfusion situations to give patients in excess of 20 units of blood.

I have given a young lady once before in Minnesota, I've given somebody up to a 100 units of blood products, including packed red blood cells and fresh frozen plasma, and platelets.

That will be an absolute impossibility that this young lady right now is an attorney.

But that individual will be dead in Nigeria.

Frankly, a lot more people would die for less, right?

So, I have to type... Oh, sorry, what did I just do?

Sorry.

All right, so you know, this is what I want you to pick away.

This is not all bad news, okay.

So currently VOOM Foundation is leading every healthcare organization in the country on open heart surgeries that have been done.

We have completed 30 medical missions out of those 24 of them where open heart surgeries.

We have logged over 35,000 volunteer training hours and we have over 400 people that are signed up, in our recruitment pools to go on as volunteers.

And we have shipped multiple containers, that are filled with equipments and consumables.

And I'm happy to tell you that two of the containers, frankly, that are gonna be going to Nigeria, we are built here on campus, you know, if anybody know about the BUILD group.

So we've got two containers that have been donated by BUILD... Two clinics 40 foot containers that are offered to serve as a clinic that came out of this campus.

And I'm very, very happy for that association.

We currently have six partner hospitals in Nigeria where we perform open heart surgery and conduct training.

This graph here kind of shows something, okay?

If you just look at this for a minute, you know, VOOM got into Nigeria in 2013.

And if you look at this graph, the blue is is visited just put things in perspective and the green is resident.

This is where we also open heart surgeries conducted in the country you will see that prior to 2013 almost every one of the few sporadic open heart surgery cases that are being done where the on by visitors, okay?

And you can see now that as stamps passed, we're beginning to gradually transfer those skills to locals which is exactly what I was talking about.

If we can just increase the number, number of visit, number of patients that are exposed to surgery that are multiple effects.

So you say, what is it that a trauma surgeon is doing with open heart surgery?

Well, I figure that with the presence of open heart surgery created ICU critical cares now that can support other major surgeries from other surgical specialties to attempt complex cases that they otherwise would not do before because you know, why would you as a surgeon operate in somebody that, you know, you're not gonna be able to take care of postoperatively, but now they're gonna be able to do so.

All right, just wanted to put faces to these patients, okay?

This is just a group of former patients that came in 2016.

And I wish that could have posed the before and after, you know, you see this patients right now, they look like human beings.

This is not the way they look before surgery is now... 'Cause all these patients with open heart surgery problems like valvular disease, they are all emaciated they look malnourished and you put in a heart valve in these patients and six months later, you couldn't recognize them.

And that's what we're talking about.

So, when we're talking about open heart surgery here in United States, naturally people think a seven year old, 80 old with the coronary artery disease.

That's not, we're talking about here.

We're talking about here are young people who by no fault of theirs you know, contracted strep infection or data say there's nobody in this room who has never had strep all their life.

But everybody knew when your baby has strep throat, you go see the doctor and they put you on in a antibiotics and all as well.

But this people did not have any treatment for their strep infection.

And so now their heart valve has been destroyed by the antigens from the bacteria..

So now they've developed viral disease that has rendered their heart poorly functional.

So on usually that you can see a young person who can't walk up to 20 steps because they have heart failure from valves.

Once you put a new valve in them, they act like a young person again, and are able to live out their lives.

So, in September, 2021 is not all surgeries.

We also able to see 600 patients over a two day that we did you know, health fair, covering primary care and treated different sort of problems from undiagnosed hypertension to undiagnosed diabetes.

Somebody will show up and tell you, my problem is I've pain a lot.

Well, blood sugar 500 that might be the reason why.

Or somebody says I'm having a headache.

You know, this headache wouldn't go away.

And they come in the blood pressure is unbelievable.

I didn't realize that there that's a human being could be walking around with blood pressure, 240 over 140 something.

I didn't know that was possible.

I've never seen that here in this country, but we saw people with blood pressure that's high, okay?

So the next.

2022 last mission frankly, in December, we had seen doubled that amount, frankly, to about 1400 patients that we saw in a three day health fair and you can see that we're not just seeing them and diagnosing them but it's also dispensing medications.

So in fact, our last mission, I'm happy to say that Texas A&M students went with us in that mission, you can see the young ladies and guys from A&M that joined us in that mission and I'm very, very happy with that partnership.

So, like I mentioned before, we've got six partner hospitals in Nigeria, and then we keep well creating opportunities in trying to figure out how gonna be able to make things better?

How are we gonna be able to reach even more people?

You know, in one of our visits, which actually was about three years ago, we had met an individual who is in the oil service industry.

His name is Emeka Okwuosa with a company called Oilserv.

So, this individual is a philanthropist, who literally wanted to be able to do something in health.

He was building a small general hospital in his village at the time when he heard about VOOM Foundation and invited us for a visit, paid a visit to him and learned his interest, he learned ours.

He learned all the challenges that I mentioned about before including the fact that you have hospitals, where there are poor staffing, you have hospitals where the infrastructure was practically nonexistent.

I mean, we running generators, you know, during the time when we are on the medical missions, we've had multiple trips where there are power failures.

And frankly, we have completed surgery in some instances, with volunteers, you know, shining light with their iPhone flashlight, you know, to be able to complete valve installation.

Imagine, have being a patient here in surgery and there is power failure and somebody's using flashlight to complete your open heart surgery, where that has happened or hand cranking the heart lung machine, because the power just felt, and that's happened or doctors walking away or nurses walking away from duty because they're on strike and our team have to pick up the pieces.

So this man heard about all these challenges and he decided to change the course of what he was trying to do with this hospital.

So now asked what our needs were.

So long story short.

Next may we are gonna be opening this facility as a place where we're gonna be conducting open heart surgery.

This this center is gonna have a cath lab is gonna have 128 slide CT scan it's gonna have echocardiogram is gonna have an in-house blood bank and is a nonprofit hospital, because that would be the only reason why VOOM Foundation is associated with him.

It's gonna be a nonprofit hospital that is gonna be printed by a foundation that he started.

So there is not gonna be any profit made out of this.

His goal obviously will be to try to fund it for two, three years and hope that the hospital will be able to fund itself as part of our vision in sustaining our work in Nigeria.

So, these are our partners here in this country, you know, so we've got, like I said, six partners in Nigeria where the hospitals over here, in the Dame Irene Okwuosa Memorial Hospital is the hospital that I just spoke about, that we're gonna be starting, in May of 2022 in the United States.

We've got a Columbia University Medical Center that is gonna be going with us in November.

That will be a very, very first trip with us in November, because one of the areas where we have been a bit deficient in our open heart surgery program has been with pediatrics.

And unfortunately for us, for every adult patient that we operate in Nigeria that about 15 to 20 pediatric patients that are waiting for surgery.

And you heard Shawn that presented earlier about infant mortality, where we're ranked the third in the world.

And part of that is from congenital heart disease.

So, I'm very, very happy to announce the relationship with Columbia and also Duke, and University of North Carolina.

And these are all partnerships that we have nursed over the last six months that hopefully will be able to help us along the way, we've got our industrial partners, as you can imagine, you can do this without industry.

So Medtronic has been extraordinarily helpful obviously, Edwards Lifesciences.

So Medtronic who valves and other consumables, Edward Lifesciences also will valves and hemodynamic monitoring Terumo with proficient supplies like oxygenators.

Americares has been extraordinary when it comes to medications and all stuff like that.

And so we are expanding literally training programs, not just in Nigeria.

Our goal obviously would be to reach other Sub-Saharan African countries, because as Shawn mentioned, Nigeria is one sixth of the entire population of Africa.

So what happens in Nigeria is going to create an impact if not in the whole of Africa, but at least in the Sub-Saharan African region.

And we hope to continue the engagement with Texas A&M, which is where you guys come in.

And this is the build clinic that I alluded to a while ago.

So how does this fit into our vision?

What I've always proposed to people that ask me, how is it that you intend to see what VOOM does in Nigeria?

I want you to imagine the hospital that showed you that we're gonna be starting in May look at that as a hub, okay?

Of a hub of a bicycle wheel.

And I'm looking at these as spokes.

We mentioned to you how difficult it is to get patients from point A to point B in the country for a host of reasons.

I foresee a future where a lot of these containers are scattered all over the place as spokes, that connect to the hub.

And if that's gonna be the case, sorry, if that's gonna be the case, that will not be possible without the intellectual capacity that I know exists at Texas A&M.

The philanthropists that we're working with has assured us that if we are able to run this hospital for about two to three years to show him what is possible in Nigeria, his goal will be to try to build one that is about five to seven times, the size of this present hospital.

That's why I'm hoping that I'll be able to tap into the intellectual capacity of Texas A&M to be able to design something that could actually be sustainable to support our mission and our vision.

I wouldn't know when we have succeeded until such a time when they tell us we're not needed.

Thank you.

(audience claps) - So what was the biggest lessons you learned along the journey?

- The biggest lesson I've learned along the journey is that human beings that is good, literally in human beings.

Let's just put it that way, because especially in this day and age, where the only thing you see on TV is it's almost like you don't even wanna watch TV any longer.

Yeah, I have true belief that that is good in the human person.

We have the capacity to solve every problem that life gives us.

So majority of the problems in this world that man made.

When Shawn is presenting here about, we have over 400 volunteers, These are nurses who don't make a whole lot of money that are willing to take two weeks of their time to go across the globe, to help somebody else who they probably would never meet again.

And that is one big lesson that I've learned that is good in every human being and we can solve our problems.

- I have one.

I think it's that we provide hope.

When I first met Dr. Ohaju, I was an employee at St. Joe's here in town.

And he told me about his story and I was very enamored by it, I was like, wow!

I've always wanted do something, you know, bigger than just the local community.

And I thought wow, you go there, you take a team assembled from the US and different continents.

You go there, you do heart surgery, people get to live.

And I thought that was the greatest thing about our program is that we do heart surgery and people get to live.

But I actually learned later, as I met a gentleman that actually came back to the hospital and thanked us that it was more than that actually, because as we mentioned earlier, when you say a country of 200 million, you have nowhere to go for open heart surgery, you become hopeless.

You think that all of a sudden my problems can't be solved.

I don't have the financial means nor is there anybody here to actually help me.

So, the dad that can came back to the hospital and actually thanked us.

His son was a heart patient in a previous mission and you know, he thanked us and thanked us and thanked us.

And I said, you know, can I video you?

And you can thank us, and I'll put it on Facebook.

And he thanked us, tears were in his eyes and everything.

And after that I said sir, how was your son?

He said, and my son passed away.

And when he said that, I was just like a deer in the headlight, I was like, okay, I'm sorry, but you know, this is my first mission.

And I need to understand why are you thanking me?

You know, why are you here?

Because your son's not alive anymore.

He says, "Oh, you don't even understand, do you know?"

I said no, I do not.

And he said, "Because you guys provided hope."

And it was just at that moment that at it dawned on me that what we're doing is bigger than just the open heart surgery, we're providing, you know, an opportunity and hope in people's lives that someone is coming to help and someone is trying to help.

And I think that's bigger sometimes than even the open heart surgeries.

An open heart surgery impact a patient and we impact their family and we help them move on and you know, that's great, but also giving people an opportunity sometimes, and hope within the country is huge.

- Yeah, your story is so inspiring.

And then when you talk about the story about Mr. Hammed, and then talk about, you know, it's not what really he needs to have the open heart surgery.

It's about his family.

It's about you know, whether he wanted it, right?

If he had that open heart surgery without the financial support, maybe there would be a bigger problem for him.

As an architect, you know, for students, some of you from you know, Medical Culture of Medicine, some of you from public health and from architects standpoint, you know, building a hospital is only one power of things.

When you have that mission, it's more than that design, build and also the social work.

And a lot more, we need to think about.

Prof. George Mann, I would like to invite Prof. George Mann to the podium.

- [Prof. George Mann] I will coming to the podium with... - Yeah.

- [Prof. George Mann] I may have stage right.

(laughs) Thank you so much for a wonderful presentation and educating students, some of the students have traveled a great deal.

And I would like to say that when you are ready, we would like to help you with a class during the projects.

I would suggest that you not wait too long because it takes a while from the time something comes on paper until it gets realized.

But we've had some very good experience.

Unfortunately, I don't know if you knew Isaac Amos from Akwa Ibom, Thompson & Grace Medical Center?

- [Dr. Vincent Ohaju] You know, I learned a little bit about that.

- Yeah.

- [Dr. Vincent Ohaju] And of course, I don't know how far their project went, you know, but I learned a little bit about that.

And what your institution was able to do in that project is something that I admire and covered.

- Yeah well, we we'd love to do it again with you.

- [Dr. Vincent Ohaju] Yes, sir.

- And unfortunately Isaac passed away due to COVID.

- [Dr. Vincent Ohaju] Oh sorry, about that.

- I guess about one to two years ago.

- [Dr. Vincent Ohaju] Oh wow, oh wow!

- He came with his whole family.

We presented the project in the Hagler Center.

And it was quite a day.

I can remember the day it was April 28th, 2014.

- [Dr. Vincent Ohaju] Wow, wow.

- (laughs) So there's a challenge for some of you.

- [Dr. Vincent Ohaju] Yeah.

- Well, I'd like the students to take a chance at coming up and thank you so much.

- [Dr. Vincent Ohaju] Thank you so much.

So I appreciate it so much.

Thank you so much.

- We have time for one question, please come to the podium.

That's a long walk, thank you.

(laughing) - I'm asking this question 'cause I'm from Nigeria.

- [Dr. Vincent Ohaju] Hello?

- And I'm wondering how much of an awareness there is in Nigeria in terms of the medical sector?

Because I find that lot of good Nigerian doctors that are moving out of Nigeria, and they would like to be a part of.

So I'm wondering how they can be incorporating in the mission trips?

- All right, so like I said before, VOOM Foundation is a 100% volunteer driven organization.

We live open and in fact, I'm glad you asked that question, but because up until two years ago, maybe three, all our volunteers were not Nigerians because Nigerians, and I'm one.

And we are not very good in investing in ideas.

We like to see things that we can touch feel because you know a lot of us have been burned before by people trying to sell us white elephants.

And so they, we are not very, very eager to join efforts like this.

But in the last three years, every year we have more and more Nigerians now becoming part of the help now.

So I don't have a big megaphone 'cause I'm not political inclined, I didn't come from a like family because if you know the story of why VOOM was started, you would know that I didn't come from wealth, you know.

So literally all that people have heard about VOOM Foundation in Nigeria have been either through former patients or Nigerian hospital partnerships.

You know, so there are a lot more my goal and my vision in this life is to see what I didn't mention to you guys before just is the fact that medical tourism in Nigeria is a three billion dollar per annum.

So every year, three billion dollars leave Nigeria on medical tourism.

And that's just the money that leaves with people who go pay for oversea care.

There is tremendous amount of brain drain.

So Nigerian hospitals as, you know, train primary care physicians.

So even surgeons and other doctors of all the specialties, but they don't have anywhere that they can function.

For instance, if I was to pack up today and decide, I'm gonna go back to Nigeria, what am I going to do?

I'm a trauma surgeon.

What I does is what I do for a living.

There is no trauma system that I can go back and work in.

So there are a lot of us that would like to go back but they can't function there.

A lot of people that would like to stay there.

They can't because the infrastructure doesn't exist to support you know, their growth.

So this is gonna change now you've met us, you take the word.

(laughs) - [Student] Oh yeah, definitely yes.

- [Prof. George Mann] Have you found the final studying project?

- [Student] Yes I have.

I'm currently working on it.

- [Prof. George Mann] Where is it?

- [Student] Oh, it's actually in Texas.

- [Prof. George Mann] Oh, have you started?

- [Student] Yes, I'm about to complete it.

(laughs) - [Prof. George Mann] Encourage some of the rest of you to get involved.

- [Dr. Vincent Ohaju] yeah.

- And thank you again, for excellent lectures.

Please join me to thank our excellent speakers today.

Thank you.

(audience clapping) And we have next week's lecture is Brad Perkins from Perkins Eastman.

And thank you so much for attending today's lecture.

Thank you.