Message from Leanne

Hi friends! Long(ish) post alert, please bear with me.
Over the past three weeks, I have been admitted to hospital three times and popped in and out on numerous occasions. I have NHIF cover, a very basic, local health insurance that cost me the equivalent of about just £3.50 a month! I also have a very sophisticated health insurance for the fancy hospitals paid for by Pursue. Both are wonderful but neither have been useful during my sickness! The first one can only be used in our local, private hospital – they treated me very well but for the wrong illness! The second meant travelling over an hour a way and I just wasn’t strong enough to do so, plus I was concerned about paying the excess.

So, I landed in Dr. Bomji’s clinic in a nearby town. Bomji is a long term friend and one of the most selfless men I know. He works in a government hospital and has his own private clinic which largely treats people at a hugely discounted cost – his heart is to serve and see people well, not make money.
Bomji’s clinic is small, somewhat unkempt and not particularly well equipped yet even those with money prefer to be seen by him because he genuinely cares and won’t stop until his patient is fully recovered. It is not uncommon to see doctor after doctor at various health facilities before being given the correct diagnoses, but just one visit to Bomji and you are guaranteed to be diagnosed and treated effectively – he knows his stuff! This doctor just needs to walk into the room with his infectious smile, booming laugh and tight hug and I feel instantly better!
Why am I sharing this? …….. during my last visit to the clinic, where I as admitted for a couple of days, I was delighted to see Bomji making some improvements and expanding his territory. He aspires to be NHIF approved so that his clinic can help even more people.

In order to be recognised by the insurance, he must first have certain things in place, hence working towards the improvements. So many private Dr.s work for profit, marking up medications and charging high consultation fees making it easy for them to achieve all that is needed to be NHIF approved. Bomji charges less than half the average consultation fee and even wavers it at times, I also don’t see any sign of him marking up the cost of medication, all this is obviously great but means he doesn’t make a profit so it’s harder for him to expand and improve his work.

As I lay on the hospital bed, I kept thinking, wouldn’t it be amazing if I could raise funds to help him do what needs to be done so that he can register with the NHIF health insurance and help even more patients. I would LOVE to surprise him with £1000 (or more!) because that would go so far towards making some significant improvements as well as appreciating his incredible service to those of us in Western Kenya. Before I set up a GoFund me page, I wanted to see how much interest there was in this idea, please let me know if you would like to help with this important matter. I wish I was better with words – and more succinct! – to convey just how much of a difference this hoped for £1000 could make.

Any contributions can be made either to my Barclays account set up purely for fundraising….
Account name: L R Coggan
Account number: 83689948
Sort Code: 20-75-01

Or, if internationally, you can use WISE money transfer online, very easy to follow the instructions. For this method you’d need to select the mobile money or MPesa option to send to and use my husband’s name, Benson Haduli Ogollah and his number 0711243600

Thank you!