Hello Iya and thank you for speaking to AS. Let\u2019s start with The Iya Foundation which you created in 2013. What is it about?<\/strong> Giving Life BY AFRICALLYSPEAKING ON MAY 25, 2015 While her peers kicked up dust in playing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2558,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0},"categories":[200,159],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theiyafoundation.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/africallyspeaking.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theiyafoundation.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2556"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theiyafoundation.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theiyafoundation.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theiyafoundation.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theiyafoundation.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2556"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theiyafoundation.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3971,"href":"https:\/\/theiyafoundation.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2556\/revisions\/3971"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theiyafoundation.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theiyafoundation.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theiyafoundation.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theiyafoundation.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThe foundation is a gift of life. We aim to educate people about kidney disease. The condition is a silent killer because it doesn\u2019t start showing until when a kidney is working at about 25% capacity. As such, it is very important that we raise awareness about it.
\nHow did you come to set up the organisation?<\/strong>
\nI was diagnosed with kidney disease as a 7-year-old. Fortunately, my mother, who is a nurse, picked up on my early symptoms of puffy eyes and feet. My stomach also swelled up. After several tests, I was found to have proteinurea (protein in urine). That is when my journey began.
\nYears later, my family decided that it was best for me to get advanced treatment in the United States, so I moved here from Cameroon. After settling in, I started school and joined a volunteering organisation called Americorps. The experience exposed me to tutoring opportunities at a housing facility for single mothers and work at soup kitchens. One semester, I became severely ill and couldn\u2019t help out as usual. At that point, my mother had been found to be a suitable kidney donor. However I needed [costly] anti-rejection medication to get the best outcome from the operation. When my colleagues at Americorps found out about my situation, they decided to support me by organising a fundraiser. In my little living room, we hatched the Iya Project.
\nWithin two years, we raised $40,000. The kindness of many people, some of whom I did not even know was humbling and inspiring. I knew I had to pay it forward.
\nOne of your main aims is to tackle the social stigma associated with renal disease. How did it affect you and why do you think people treated you differently?<\/strong>
\nWhen I was growing up, kidney failure was not just uncommon in Cameroon, it was highly unusual for a child to be affected by it. Some mistook my condition for lupus while others thought it was sickle cell disease. There were also people who thought I had been bewitched!
\nAs a teenager, boys shied away from dating me. A tube in stomach may have been good for dialysis but it was not exactly attractive. I was also very thin and often had bloodshot eyes and a dull complexion.
\nIn fact, my mother\u2019s decision to donate her kidney to me amazed a lot of people, as they thought I was dying.<\/p>\nRead the rest of the article here: https:\/\/africallyspeaking.wordpress.com\/2015\/05\/25\/giving-life\/<\/a><\/h4>\n
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