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DR EMMA
AMOAFO-MENSAH
NHS Doctor, founder of Friday Born Designs and philanthropist - Dr Emma Amoafo-Mensah is truly a triple threat. She explains what it’s like being frontline during the current Coronavirus pandemic and answers the key questions that have been on our mind regarding COVID-19. Dr Emma also tells us how she started giving back and how she accidentally started a business, all whilst studying to become a medical doctor. Dr Emma has successfully created a healthcare template in Ghana that she plans to replicate all over Africa and the world.
Dr Emma Amoafo-Mensah was halfway through her medical degree in 2012 when she realised that she wanted to do more. She still wanted to study medicine, but she also wanted to give back. “I had accompanied my dad to Bless the Children International Home, an orphanage in Ghana the summer before, and he had made a donation to them on behalf of his church. I came up with the idea of making bow ties and selling them to my friends so that when I went to visit the orphanage the following summer, I could make a donation to them also”.
As a student, Dr Emma had set herself a target of £50, created a Facebook page and took it from there. To her surprise, within 6 months she had made £600, and all of a sudden it went from simply being an avenue to raise money to an actual brand. Dr Emma was still a medical student and had only seen this as a hobby. “I was featured in the newspaper belonging to my university and people were asking me to style their shows and provide outfits for video shoots. It was all really surreal. I continued to make bow ties in my bedroom and travelled to Ghana once a year, using the profits from sales to fund a donation to the orphanage”. Dr Emma initially had no plans of starting a fashion brand but has grown Friday Born Designs into an African inspired fashion label that mixes African fabrics with British silhouettes. Every penny made by Friday Born Designs is taken to Ghana by Dr Emma to fund various projects that aim to enrich the lives of those whose circumstances have not allowed them to reach their full potential.
Once Dr Emma had graduated as a doctor, she wanted to merge her two passions so through this, she started Friday Born Designs Health Screening Days in 2017. Here, Dr Emma and her team of Ghanaian doctors travelled to rural areas in Ghana to conduct screening for common diseases, provide health education and medical attention to those who have neglected their health due to lack of finances. Over 300 people have benefited from the Health Screening Days.
“In ten years, I’d like to see Friday Born Designs as a global initiative providing the template for healthcare missions all over the world”. Dr Emma is also on a mission to create more opportunities and provide support to many creative arts entrepreneurs in Ghana where there is great potential and vision but lack of access. The young doctor has envisioned expanding her work into other areas of Africa and the rest of the world. “What I would like to see is the Friday Born Designs template duplicated. My vision has always been for Friday Born, to provide a template so that any group registered health professional - as long as they are sufficiently qualified, could apply and say, ‘We know of this rural area that’s in need of healthcare and we want to run a health screening’ and from there, that healthcare professional would then receive detailed instructions, the literature they need, testing kits and the structure. They will then be able to take that pack to any country in the world” she states. “So, what I want is to actually provide the template for healthcare professionals around the world to help people everywhere they go. I think before you start something like this, it seems very difficult but once you actually decide that this is what you want to do and you put your mind to it, it's really not that difficult to complete. I want the Friday Born Health Screening Days template all over the world, helping millions of people every year”.
In the UK, Dr Emma also engages in community work where she mentors young people who want to get into medicine and other healthcare careers. In particular, she focuses on those from black and ethnic minority backgrounds. Dr Emma does this through talks and workshops and has formed a platform alongside a few other doctors called Health & the City which is all about bringing health back into the city of London. Health & the City is all about teaching young Londoners how to be healthy and also getting people into healthcare careers. “We actually have a student body who is part of the team who pushes people to get healthcare experience and mentorship. Personally, I’ve looked at probably a million personal statements and helped numerous people get into medical school and other science degrees, so my real aim is to inspire. I want to inspire a lot of people”. Dr Emma tells us that when she was applying to be a doctor, she didn’t personally know any doctors herself. “When I was at school and I told my teachers, I wanted to be a doctor, they would just say ‘oh, well it’s too difficult, people from around here don’t really do things like that. Why don’t you be a nurse’? I’m just lucky that I had parents that were able to encourage and push me to do whatever it is that I wanted to do, and I know that not everybody has the opportunity”. Dr Emma knows that her real job is to inspire. She wants everyone to know that they can! “No one should ever be told that they can’t achieve something that’s in their heart”.
“What motivates me to keep going is essentially, I know there are people like me who are not from what you would describe as a ‘noble background’, you know. I don’t necessarily know people that change the world, but I know that I can. I now have many people around me who are incredibly inspiring and who speak life into me every day”. Dr Emma explains further that she is always motivated to keep going when she looks at the world and sees so much suffering. “I see so many people who cannot reach their full potential, just because of their circumstances that they were placed in and it pushes me to keep going because I know that could have easily been me. There’s nothing that separates me from the child that’s living in Ashanti town you know, or who has a house that’s just made out of bricks and a tin roof. There’s nothing that separates me from that person except for an opportunity”. Dr Emma knows that Friday Born Designs can provide endless opportunities and has already begun doing so. “We can really build something so strong that we will begin to see a lot of world leaders pop up from the most unlikely of places”. Since its inception, Friday Born Designs has provided a clean water supply to a village of 1000 people and the Bless the Children Orphanage in Ghana – the orphanage where it all began for Dr Emma. She has also set up a fully equipped IT centre for Bless the Children Orphanage and surrounding schools through Friday Born Designs and regularly donates food and personal care items to other orphanages and schools.
“We should give back. You don’t know that in your time of giving back, you’re actually bettering yourself. In doing Friday Born, I’ve learnt so much. I’ve been able to accomplish so much more than I could ever have imagined. I’ve received recognition and it’s not that I needed recognition, but it created a massive platform for me to do so much more than I ever could have imagined” Dr Emma explains. “I’m not even 30 years old yet and I’ve created a legacy, just because I had compassion and decided that I want to help others. I’m not comfortable being in my own bubble”. Dr Emma met her husband through Friday Born Designs and has cultivated a number of friendships also. “Even as a doctor, when I go to apply for a job, they’re more interested in me because of Friday Born. It’s just about having compassion on others. You have no idea the kind of doors it’s going to open and the kinds of things it will do for you. The one thing as well is, you can be determined to do something but when, it's actually compassion, it drives you so much further than self-determination ever could”. Dr Emma believes that giving back is also about you and bettering yourself – simply by caring about others. “I could never talk about this enough. When you just decide to help and uplift others, you don’t know how much you are lifting yourself”.
Dr Emma got her first job at the age of 16, working for Boots behind the pharmacy counter. “Of course, I’m not a pharmacist, so my job was just giving small advice. If someone came in wanting to buy paracetamol, I had to tell them, ‘don’t take more than this number of tablets during the day’ and how much time to leave in-between each dose. I could recommend Lemsip to people and tell them what vitamins work for what”. Dr Emma has never had a job outside of the healthcare remit as she had known from a young age that she wanted to be a doctor and was determined to make this happen. “To be honest, I don’t think there’s anyone that could have told me that I couldn’t become a doctor, I had decided it when I was a child”. Dr Emma goes on again to rave about her parents and how lucky she was to have them. “They were going to push me not because they wanted a child that’s a doctor but because they wanted a child who puts their mind to something and just does it”.
“My day to day work as a doctor involves having a ward of patients that I see every morning. In the afternoon, I do jobs that I have picked up from the ward round and also spend time maybe talking to family members and dealing with emergencies”. For Dr Emma, no two days are the same which she admits is what she really loves about her job. “I have different roles with my job, so, some days I’m on call, which is very fast paced, and I see a lot of emergencies with hostels other days. I might be in the clinic which is a bit more relaxed and I get to see patients that are feeling a bit better. Some days I’m with patients that are very sick. It really varies”.
Given the current pandemic, Dr Emma has been looking after many patients with Coronavirus which she has admitted that she has been finding very difficult. “The type of medicine that I do has changed a lot in terms of the way in which we manage these patients. Of course, I am seeing more people die than I would see on a day to day basis as well, so it’s really been a big change for all of us”. At the moment there have been several changes in the hospitals. The staff may have to work in different wards. “I might be moving to the intensive care department. Luckily, I have some previous experience in that area, so I am more than happy to go there”. As expected, the working expectations have changed but, the NHS staff continue to remain adaptable and flexible. Fortunately, there is a brand new hospital being built in East London that some staff will relocate to, will have around 4,000 hospital beds to ensure that there is a greater level of support for all patients. “Our infection control policies have all changed and we all have to be making sure that we are up to date with the new recommendations and new protocols”. Even though there are some levels of anxiety from the staff, this is a very interesting and exciting time to be in the field of medicine.
“I feel personally honored to be working in the NHS in a time like this. It is a time that is going to go down in history”.
Everything in the healthcare sector is now very different but there is evidently a good support network amongst the staff. “I have not really experienced much anxiety or anything like that, because I know that this calling of medicine is for me. It has always been about providing care for people. I am ready to do that in whichever capacity is needed at the moment”. In this time, you could say that all the healthcare workers are truly experiencing what it means to work on the frontline, being adaptable and ready to accept a certain level of risk. As a result of applying more wisdom on the use of resources and time, it has been communicated that many hospitals will not be responding to non-urgents cases anymore. “Non-urgent surgeries are cancelled, all our focus is on preparing the hospitals for emergencies and that is with COVID-19 related and non COVID-19 related cases. “We are all having to use a certain level of our own wisdom, we are not being told exactly what to do, we all have to step up”.
“For the most part, I have seen that there is a lot of comradery. I have seen that the moral is high and it has been really encouraging just to see how everyone acts in unprecedented times”. It is hopeful and inspiring to see that everybody is really looking out for each other and taking steps to ensure that no one burns out. There are still questions but knowing that everyone is remaining positive and giving each other reassuring words is inspiring. Right now the industry of medicine is displaying great acts of leadership, proving that the skill leadership is essential. Compassion is also vital for everyone around us, not just as a healthcare professional but for everyone. Everybody process’s uncertainty and risk in different ways. “For me I just want to be that person that brings peace and calm in every situation”.
There is most certainly a stigma behind Coronavirus. It’s almost as though Coronavirus has become as bad as, if not worse than having the HIV virus. When HIV came out in the 90’s, there was little to no knowledge of how to treat it. Of course now, scientists and doctors have discovered ways to treat the virus giving those with HIV the chance to have a normal life expectancy. Coronavirus is being portrayed like a plague and not everyone knows how to deal with this. “In the hospitals we have patients that we have treated for Coronavirus and we have family members that do not want to accept them back home because they are scared that they are going to catch it from them. Nursing homes do not want their patients back” Dr Emma states. “I think over the next few weeks and months we will have some significant problems with those who have mental health issues”.
No one can be completely sure of the death toll, even though we do receive updates online. “There will definitely be some countries that will be underreporting. Some developing countries will be missing some cases as they are testing a lot less than other countries so, it will be almost impossible to know exactly how many numbers of deaths there are”.
Families are all reacting to Coronavirus differently. The majority of Corona patients with the virus are the elderly. The younger patients do not often need admission to hospital, they can usually manage it at home by self isolating and keeping themself safe. “Alot of the older patients are quite oblivious to be honest, a lot of the eldery with Coronavirus have dementia or get acute confusion which we call delirium because of the infection” Dr Emma tells us. “I take a portion of my day to call family members just to give them updates about anything significant that happens.” It is these small yet impactful acts of compassion and thoughtfulness that uplift the moral of others. “Others, unfortunately do think that their family members do have this killer disease and therefore do not want to accept them back home.”
If there are instances where a whole family falls ill and are self isolating, issues such as getting food could arise. Fortunately there are several options they could result in ensuring no one goes out to the supermarket. Options include online food deliveries and reaching out for the support of family and friends around you that could drop food off on their door steps. “I believe there are also a lot of volunteers who will soon start supporting with home deliveries”. The most asked question at the moment is ‘how do we know when someone has fully recovered?’. With symptoms being similar to that of the flu, the advice given to recover is to rest and self isolate for 7 days if you have the symptoms. “It varies between a lot of people, but usually the important thing to tell if someone has recovered is to ask them how they are feeling. People know their bodies. Usually they know when they have recovered”.
You could be thinking this is very risky, how do the health care workers do this? Everyday, all healthcare workers and volunteers are at risk but, it is a vocation that will always have an element of risk, even before Coronavirus. “There is always an element of risk but we are here to serve”. “It is quite interesting that all of a sudden we are superheroes because in terms of our actual day, we do not think we are necessarily working harder than we were before”. All the healthcare professionals have had support from everyone all over the world for their courage and urgent support in this time of need. Businesses such as Cally Munchy; the UK’s best African cuisine have demonstrated exceptional acts of CSR by delivering food to NHS staff members all around the city. “I also think it has been amazing that within 24 hours, the UK has managed to rally over 500,000 volunteers to help in this time.” Medical students have also risen up to the occasion offering to babysit the children of those on the frontline, as well as volunteer in the hospitals. “It is amazing to see the whole nation rise up to tackle this. It is an absolute honor to be a healthcare professional at this sort of time”.