LEADERSHIP Primary Healthcare Model of the Year 2025: Dr Seidu Adebayo Bello

1 week ago 2

He heals not conscionable faces, but futures.

Surgery arsenic Service, Compassion arsenic Policy

Across the villages and metropolis hospitals of Nigeria, Dr Seidu Adebayo Bello has go synonymous with healing that transcends medicine.

Through his pioneering enactment astatine the Cleft and Facial Deformity Foundation (CFDF), helium has taken specializer country to the grassroots—performing much than 2,600 life-changing operations escaped of complaint and giving backmost smiles that erstwhile hid down stigma and pain.

“Healthcare is not charity,” helium says. “It is dignity restored.”

A Vision Rooted successful Access and Equity

Dr Bello’s doctrine is elemental yet radical: prime healthcare indispensable ne'er beryllium connected one’s postcode oregon purse.

His outreach exemplary blends surgery, education, and rehabilitation—a holistic model that makes betterment sustainable and replicable successful low-resource settings.

From Lagos to Kano, from Ondo to Cross River, CFDF teams question with portable instrumentality and an service of unpaid surgeons, anaesthetists, and nurses. Each ngo is simply a moving hospital—screening patients, performing analyzable surgeries, and offering counselling and nutrition enactment to families who erstwhile thought healing was beyond reach.

Under his leadership, the Foundation has go a blueprint for community-based superior healthcare, peculiarly successful the fields of reconstructive and facial surgery.

Changing Perceptions, Not Just Faces

Cleft lips and palates person agelong carried a cruel societal burden—children hidden indoors, mothers blamed, families ostracised.

Dr Bello’s missions dainty these conditions medically, but his enactment besides fights ignorance. Every outreach includes nationalist sensitisation campaigns that explicate causes, dispel myths, and promote aboriginal treatment.

Through assemblage acquisition and diligent follow-up, helium has replaced fearfulness with cognition and shame with pride. Entire communities present recognize that congenital deformities are not curses—but conditions that subject and compassion tin cure.

The Surgeon, the Scholar, the Servant

A advisor oral and maxillofacial surgeon and Director of Maxillofacial Surgery astatine the State House Medical Centre, Asokoro, Dr Bello leads with precision and purpose.

He is simply a Fellow of the National Postgraduate Medical College of Nigeria (FMCDS), West African College of Surgeons (FWACS), International Congress of Oral Implantologists (FICOI) and Global Congress of Implantology (FGCOI).

As an examiner astatine some nationalist and determination colleges, helium has trained and assessed hundreds of young surgeons, ensuring that the adjacent procreation inherits not conscionable skill, but conscience.

He has authored implicit 35 technological papers, founded the International Craniofacial Academy (ICA) successful Abuja, and continues to propulsion for reforms successful surgical acquisition and healthcare policy.

Beyond the Operating Theatre

Outside the hospital, Dr Bello remains profoundly connected to his roots. He serves arsenic Aare Musulumi of Ago Are land, chairs the Oke Ogun Development Forum (Abuja Chapter), and is known for his humility and assemblage service.

To his patients, however, helium is simply “the doc who gave maine my smile.”

Every statistic nether his Foundation hides a quality story—of a kid who tin present eat, of a parent who nary longer hides her baby, of a household reintegrated into society.

Sustainable Health for Sustainable Hope

Founded successful 2010, the Cleft and Facial Deformity Foundation has held implicit 50 surgical missions crossed each six geopolitical zones.

Its exemplary of partnership—with authorities governments, teaching hospitals, and section communities—proves that effectual healthcare request not hold for cleanable infrastructure.

In a state wherever entree to specialised attraction remains scarce, CFDF stands retired arsenic a public-private occurrence story, aligning its enactment with the Sustainable Development Goals 3 and 10—Good Health and Reduced Inequalities.

“We measurement occurrence not by applause,” Dr Bello says, “but by however galore lives we reconstruct to fullness.”

The Numbers That Tell a Human Story

2,600 surgeries performed escaped of charge

50 aesculapian missions completed crossed Nigeria

Hundreds of wellness workers trained successful agrarian communities

Thousands of families educated connected cleft awareness

Countless smiles restored

Each fig is simply a beingness reclaimed from pain, each ngo a testament to what medicine looks similar erstwhile guided by empathy.

A Life That Inspires a Movement

Dr Bello’s quiescent gyration has inspired aesculapian volunteers crossed West Africa to spot work arsenic the existent essence of the profession.

<...
Read Entire Article