About the foundation
A doctor should not be lost to a bill. An elder should not go without care because nobody is counting them.
CHEER MEDICS FOUNDATION works at two ends of the same problem — the people training to provide care, and the people least able to reach it.
- Founded
- 2023
- Based in
- Abraka, Delta State
- Registered
- Nigeria CAC 7025934
Every number here will be one we counted
This space will carry figures once each has been counted and we can say precisely what it measures. Until then it stays open rather than estimated.
Two ends of one healthcare system
Medical training in Nigeria is long, expensive and unforgiving of interruption. A student whose family circumstances change in their fourth year does not pause — they leave, and the years already invested leave with them.
What ends a medical education is not always money. Burnout, anxiety and depression run through medical training everywhere, and where asking for help is still read as weakness, students carry it privately until they cannot carry it at all.
At the other end, elderly people go without routine care. Not because treatment does not exist, but because reaching it costs a journey, a fee and an advocate, and they may have none of the three.
These are not separate problems. They are the same healthcare system, seen from opposite ends.
I paid my own way through medical school
There was no fund behind me, and no second chance if a term's fees did not come together in time. Medical training is unforgiving of interruption, and carrying the cost of it while trying to do the work took something out of the work. My grades paid part of that price.
I do not offer that as a hardship story. I offer it because it is the reason this foundation is careful about one particular thing. A student who is losing their place is very rarely losing it because they cannot do the work.
Six months into my training, my mother died of a perforated ulcer.
A perforated ulcer is a surgical emergency. What decides the outcome is how quickly someone is seen and operated on. She was not reached in time.
I was half a year into learning what medicine can do, when the distance between what it can do and what actually reaches people stopped being something I was studying and became my family.
CHEER MEDICS FOUNDATION works at two ends of one healthcare system because I have stood at both of them. A student who can do the work and cannot fund it. A patient for whom the treatment exists and does not arrive.
It is also why the money here goes to specific things rather than to general good intentions, and why we would rather leave a figure blank than estimate it. Somebody who has been on the receiving end of a system that did not arrive in time does not become relaxed about detail.
Wisdom Ikpama
Founder
Mission and vision
Our mission
To keep capable medical students in training when money or ill health would otherwise end it, and to bring routine healthcare within reach of elderly people who cannot travel to find it.
Our vision
A Nigeria where a medical education does not end because of money, and where a treatable illness does not become fatal because care arrived too late.
What we will and will not do in pursuit of those is set out further down this page, under how we decide.
What we built in response
Each programme exists because somebody was falling through a gap that nobody else was covering.
Mental Health Support
Counselling and psychological support for medical students facing burnout, anxiety and depression during training.
Financial Assistance for Medical Students
Scholarships, stipends and emergency grants so financial hardship does not end a medical education.
Healthcare Access for Medically Disadvantaged Elderly
Clinics, home visits and medication support for elderly people without reliable access to healthcare.
Research and Advocacy for Health Equity
Original research and public advocacy addressing the structural causes of health inequity in Nigeria.
Decisions you can check we are keeping
You see the conditions before you write
Our eligibility rules sit on the application form, above it, before you begin. Being turned down against a condition nobody mentioned wastes your time and is unkind.
No one person authorises a large award
Above a threshold a second approver is required. Not because we distrust our team, but because that is how you protect people from a decision made on a bad day.
We publish nothing we have not counted
Where a figure is not yet known, the space stays blank. A confident number nobody measured is the easiest thing in the world to print.
Your story is not our fundraising material
We will not use a name, photograph or circumstances in an appeal without asking separately — in a way you can decline without it affecting what you receive.
Naming ourselves
We have not published our team yet — a photograph and a job title is not accountability. In the meantime anything here can be asked about directly, and a person will answer.
Ask us anything- Registered name
- Cheer Medics Foundation
- Registered office
- 02 Wisdom Ikpama Lane, Abraka, Delta State, Nigeria
- CAC number
- 7025934
If you need help
You do not need an introduction, a referral, or anyone to vouch for you. The conditions are on the form before you start writing, and we will tell you either way.
