Batife O., 1

This four-month-old baby girl is suffering from severe abdominal swelling, pain, vomiting, and bloody stools after being raised entirely on artificial milk due to her mother's inability to breastfeed. She urgently requires lifesaving surgery at the Federal Medical Centre (FMC) Owo, a critical intervention that her family has been forced to refuse up until now. Her young parents are completely unemployed—her father is still a student and her mother works as an unpaid apprentice—leaving them entirely dependent on a paternal grandmother. Surviving with no electricity and a total household income of just $15.05 USD (20,000 Nigerian Nairas) per month, this destitute family has absolutely no way to afford medical care. They desperately need Helpster's intervention to fund this urgent operation and rescue their infant daughter from an otherwise fatal condition.

The patient presented with a week-long history of vomiting, severe abdominal pain, distention, and loose bloody stools that progressed to a coral-like mucoid consistency. A definitive diagnosis of intussusception was established, which had tragically advanced to cause dehydration, anemia, and extensive bowel gangrene affecting the caecum, appendix, and terminal ileum. Emergency resuscitation and an urgent laparotomy were performed to excise the dead tissues, reconnect the bowel via anastomosis, and wash out the abdomen. Despite these intensive surgical efforts, blood transfusions, and intravenous antibiotics, the child ultimately passed away from overwhelming sepsis secondary to fecal peritonitis, a direct consequence of the critical delays in receiving timely surgical intervention.

The patient was presented to our facility with a four-day history of abdominal pain and distension, associated with vomiting and the passage of bloody, mucoid stools resembling "red currant jelly." Based on clinical examination and an abdominal ultrasound scan revealing a target sign and pseudo-kidney sign, a diagnosis of intussusception with a mildly thickened bowel wall was confirmed, for which an immediate laparotomy is recommended. If left untreated, this progressive bowel obstruction will rapidly cut off blood supply to the intestines, inevitably resulting in tissue necrosis, severe internal infection (peritonitis), bowel perforation, and a life-threatening medical emergency.

The patient presented with a week-long history of vomiting, severe abdominal pain, distention, and loose bloody stools that progressed to a coral-like mucoid consistency. A definitive diagnosis of intussusception was established, which had tragically advanced to cause dehydration, anemia, and extensive bowel gangrene affecting the caecum, appendix, and terminal ileum. Emergency resuscitation and an urgent laparotomy were performed to excise the dead tissues, reconnect the bowel via anastomosis, and wash out the abdomen. Despite these intensive surgical efforts, blood transfusions, and intravenous antibiotics, the child ultimately passed away from overwhelming sepsis secondary to fecal peritonitis, a direct consequence of the critical delays in receiving timely surgical intervention.