By Ummul-khair Aliyu, YES 2009-2010, Nigeria

My name is Ummul-khair Aliyu and I’m from Kaduna State, Nigeria. I stayed in Des Moines, Iowa during my YES exchange year from 2009-2010. Over the past three months, I carried out a project focusing on sewing hospital bedsheets, in hopes to help make our hospitals neater and safer. We wanted to do this in order to stop the spread of diseases in our hospitals and to make their environments and treatment processes more effective. 

Nigeria is a rich country with modern hospitals and an advanced medical system in the larger cities.  However, in other parts of the country, and especially in hospitals for the underserved poor, there is a lack of basic resources including bed sheets for hospital beds, theater gowns for the medical staff, and even gloves. It is even possible to blame the lack of mattress coverings for contributing to the spread of diseases in these hospitals. Sadly, patients may get even sicker as they use a bare mattress which has not been cleaned or sanitized. I visited many of these hospitals myself.

I am a student in the medical field, studying human physiology at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria. I am currently in my final year.  I am also lucky enough to have skills as an experienced seamstress.  I thought to put my two interests and skills together towards a problem with a practical solution. I could lead a team to make bed sheets and hospital gowns at low costs. I had already used my sewing skills in the past to make clothes for children and donated them to an orphanage in Barnawa Kaduna State.

I competed for the 2014 YES Alumni Grant and received funding from the YES program through American Councils for International Education to carry out the bed sheets project. First, I had to build partnerships in the community. I contacted the hospitals which we wanted to donate the bed sheets and theater gowns and they were happy to accept the offer.  Some of the hospitals were affiliated with the Kaduna Ministry of Health as it is important to work with local government.

For the team, we had a total of 17 participants; ten YES alumni and seven who were not YES alumni. All were happy to be part of the project and worked really hard to make the project successful. First, I taught three other alumni how to sew so they could assist with creating the bed sheets. Then, with the help of another YES alum who is skilled at sewing and two of my family members, we made 100 sets of bed sheets and 20 hospital gowns. The rest of the volunteers helped us by purchasing the materials, folding and packaging the sheets, and delivering the donations. 

On September 6, 2014, we divided the sheets and gowns evenly and donated them to two hospitals in Kaduna, Nigeria. We also purchased and donated a few other sanitation resources such as gloves and face masks that we knew were needed.

The project was very successful as it achieved our goal of making our hospitals better. The hospitals were very happy and grateful for this. I hope I will also inspire others to do projects to help our countries move forward.