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Meet Dr Ola Orekunrin; founder of first air ambulance service in West Africa

Hello World! Temmy Balogun’s blog brings to you an igniting article about a life saving innovation by a young beautiful and amazing Nigerian female medical doctor to brighten your Wednesday!

To achieve ones set goals in  life, things such as ; determination, hardwork, persistence, prayers,  and patience is needed. When almost or all these are  present, together with our passion, they serve as driving forces to help us breakthrough odds on our way of progress, and we can finally  achieve our set targets.

Behind every passion there are events or occurences either bad or good that stimulate our interests for a particular goal and develops into a strong passion. Everyone tends to have different stories behind their passion for a set goal/dream,  for Dr ola Orekunrin, the occurence that led to her celebrated milestone today, happened to be a very tragic one.

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Dr Ola Orekunrin

Take few minutes break from work, relax, read on and share your thoughts…..

Dr Ola Orekunrin who hails from Ilawe-Ekiti in Ekiti State of Nigeria, was born, raised and trained in the UK, where she graduated as one of the youngest medical doctors in England at age 21 and presently a  trainee helicopter pilot at age 30.

While she was studying to become a doctor in the UK, her younger sister fell seriously ill while traveling in Nigeria. The 12-year-old girl, who’d gone to the West African country on holiday with relatives, needed urgent care, but the nearest hospital couldn’t deal with her condition.

Orekunrin and her family immediately began looking for an air ambulance service to rapidly transport the girl, a sickle cell anemia sufferer, to a more suitable healthcare facility. They searched all across West Africa but were stunned to find out there were none in the whole region.

“The nearest one at the time was in South Africa,” Ola remembers. “They had a 12-hour activation time so by the time they were ready to activate, my sister was dead”.
“It was really a devastating time for me and I started thinking about whether I should be in England talking about healthcare in Africa, or I should be in Africa dealing with healthcare and trying to do something about it.” Dr ola explained.

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Dr Ola and Colleagues

The young doctor was motivated  by the tragic death of her sister,and so decided to leave behind a high-flying job in the UK to take to the Nigerian skies and address the vital issue of urgent healthcare in Africa’s most populous country.

Determined to make a difference in medical practice and health care delivery system in Nigeria, Dr Orekunrin decided to set up her innovative firm , Lagos-based Flying Doctors Nigeria, which is the first air ambulance service in West Africa,transporting victims of medical emergencies, including industrial workers from the country’s booming oil and gas sector. It basically provides critical care transportation solutions to both the private and public sector by selling yearly air ambulance cover plans to states, companies and individuals.

Since then, she has successfully steered the company upwards in achieving its corporate goals and ensuring sustained growth.“Against all odds, I passed my A-Levels with flying colors, started my degree at the University of York at 15. I supported myself all through, working. I wrote my final medical examinations at 21, thus emerging the youngest medical doctor in England,” said Ola Orekunrin

We all experience things that can motivate us to create innovative concepts everyday but many dont take congnizance of things around , we live in a world where opportunities stare at us in the face, all we need to do is search for where there are loop holes in our field of interest or other fields and innovate something that can help fix it, by doing this, goals are achieved with the presence of the earlier  mentioned factors;determination, hardwork, persistence, prayers,  and patience.

Dr Ola Orekunrin was motivated by a tragic event, she recognised a loophole in her field , conceptualised an idea that could fixed it and took bold steps to  help achieve her set goals.  You can be innovative too! Let me ask you these questions; how observant are you about things happening in your environment? Do you get motivated by occurrences? Do you brainstorm on how to fix problems around you? Do you have strong passion for a particular thing? Do you have  set goals/dreams ?  Have you drawn our  steps on how to achieve your goals/dreams? What keeps or will keep you going while trying to actualise your dream?

Answer the above questions, contact me if you have further questions  or if you would like to rub minds on strategies on how you can achieve your dreams.  Discover loopholes in your field of interest, brainstorm, set goals and mark out strategies to achieve your targets, and with determination your dreams will come to pass.

By doing this, you will add  great value to the society and at the same time fulfill your personal goals just like Dr Ola Orekunrin……

You can connect with Dr Ola Orekunrin;

Linkedin- Ola Orekunrin

 

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