Ugo is only 58 years old – hardly an age to be considered “elderly” – but everyone who sees her assumes she is a much older woman. As a housewife living in rural Nigeria, Ugo’s life has been far from easy, and her body is paying the price.
Even though she no longer has small children to care for at home, Ugo still has to make a living, and she does this by subsistence farming and bartering in the local market. Every year she tills the ground and makes mounds to plant cassava stems. It is hard, hot, physically demanding work.
With all the wear and tear on her joints over the years, it is no wonder that Ugo suffers from osteoarthritis. Most evenings, her joints are screaming in pain by the end of the day. For years Ugo tried to make do with a local brand of pain reliever, but fake and ineffective medicines have flooded the Nigerian market and the pills she took provided little to no relief from the pain.
Finally, Ugo found help through a medical mission team that was visiting Nigeria. They host a pop-up clinic in her area every year, and they come laden with boxes of supplies and medicine from MAP. The volunteer physicians on the team now provide Ugo with an ample supply of pain reliever each year.
This medicine, a simple and affordable solution for those of us in the U.S., is as valuable as gold to Ugo. She can trust that the medicine she receives from MAP is genuine, so when she takes two tablets in the evening, she has full confidence that she will wake up the next morning pain-free.
While many of us may take something as simple as a bottle of over-the-counter pain reliever for granted, there are many others around the world – just like Ugo – who consider it a life-changing gift from God.
Thanks to MAP medicine, Ugo can continue to live her life without fear of debilitating pain at the end of each day. She now wakes up strong and pain-free because she has access to basic medicine.
If you are part of the MAP family of supporters, thank you for helping us make a difference in the lives of Ugo and so many others around the world.
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*To protect the privacy of the individual featured in this story, their name has been changed.
