Three months after she was born, Ayotunde Omitogun was diagnosed with an atrial septal defect (ASD), a birth defect that causes a hole in the heart.
In 2013, 26 years later, she was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension (PH) caused by the untreated defect.
Three months after she was born, Ayotunde Omitogun was diagnosed with an atrial septal defect (ASD), a In 2013, 26 years later, she was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension (PH) caused by the untreated defect. defect that causes a hole in the heart.
In India where she went for surgery, doctors prescribed drugs to help manage her condition but because they were not available in Lagos where Omitogun lived, she had to rely on Nigerian patients travelling from India. Then COVID-19 happened. No one could travel.
“So I was on and off my drugs which made me fall sick,” Omitogun, now 36, told Al Jazeera. In search of an alternative, Ayotunde reached out to a brand she had come across on Twitter earlier this year, Famasi Africa.
Founded in 2020, it is a Nigeria-based health tech startup in Nigeria built to digitise doorstep delivery of medications and routine checkups.
It is one of a new generation of startups seeking to help Africans overcome hurdles in healthcare on a continent where half of the 1.2 billion people cannot access quality health care.
The lag is mostly due to an underfunding of the sector. This year, Nigeria allocated 1.58 trillion naira ($2 billion) to the sector, less than 10 percent of the overall budget.
Like some of its neighbours, it falls short of a commitment by African leaders at the 2001 Abuja Declaration to allocate 15 percent of its budget to the health sector.
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