STEADY MY STUBBORN HEART is a project that touches on SDG 3: Good health and wellbeing alongside UNAI: 9 – Sustainability. It revolves around educating, managing, preventing and most importantly making the community aware of stroke, its symptoms, its causes, its management which includes medication and therapy, its prevention and knowing other "opportunistic" diseases that are a result of stroke, a common example being vascular dementia. This project cuts both ways, the patient / victim and to the caregiver - this being a family member, who becomes the key player in all this especially after stroke has occurred and its in the managing stage. The effects that stroke leaves behind is permanent and this is the scariest part. Seeing this once great human being slowly deteriorating before the loved one’s eyes. It is frustrating, heartbreaking, expensive because of the medication needed to both manage and prevent another occurrence and outright confusing to someone with little or no knowledge about stroke. Finally, there is the associated diseases that come from it, vascular dementia which goes unnoticed and leads to permanent disability of persons and even death. The alarming part being that this is no longer an old person's disease, more young people are getting susceptible to stroke and, in our community, and country, emergency treatment for stroke is something that is 30 years at best in the future. A sad fact for a medical emergency that requires fast treatment due to its narrow effect reversal window of 3 hours after the first symptoms have been identified.
The millennium fellowship has helped me grow as it has provided a platform for me to launch my project. It also made me think outside the box as I interacted with other millennium fellows and getting to share on various ideas, knowledge and plans on executing and implementation of their different projects. Being a campus director of my cohort, I couldn’t be prouder of the team that has become a family now. Seeing their zeal, passion and drive for the sincere betterment of our community with no expectations of any reward whatsoever deserves a hats off moment. A selfless act from selfless leaders.
At the moment I have partnered with the country’s only stroke association organization called Stroke Association of Kenya on bringing life to the project. I have managed to narrow down a locale and identified the major public hospitals in that locality as public hospitals serve more people in general as they are affordable and easily accessible to the people of the community, gaining access to them, the doctors and patients especially those undergoing physiotherapy due to the devastating effects of stroke.
Earlier in November, I held an awareness campaign in my university as I strongly believe in charity first beginning at home and it was a great success.(I have attached photos of the day in this article) Seeing the look on their faces when they realized how real stroke is and how random it is, that it could strike them despite their young age brought a type of satisfaction of a job being done well.

In December I held a social event where I met stroke victims, stroke survivors and their caregivers. Here I got a first hand and a heart to heart experience on what really stroke can do. A sad but enlightening day where the government's shortcomings in upholding their end of the deal with the stroke victims were highlighted such as providence of wheelchair and drugs such as blood thinners for the management of stroke was nothing but fairytale.
The reality being those who had resources and went to the best hospitals during the stroke attack had a 70 % - 100% recovery with little to no effect of the disease. Those who had no access to the top tier medical care had a less than 50% recovery rate and most were confined to using wheelchairs or walking sticks, most being unable to go back to their daily jobs due to their newly formed disabilities which meant poverty creeping in as they were bread winners in their families.
All this coupled with the fact that some of their marriages were destroyed and infested with stories of their partners walking out on them or being unfaithful, bringing depression and diseases like HIV/AIDS. Stroke doesn't just physically affect the person but has a wholesome effect on the person's emotions and mental health, not forgetting their families too.
All these calls for more intervention and fight towards the course. Making it known that its a killer disease and we are saying no to it. Being defiant and telling our hearts to beat, stubbornly for and to the course!