About Le Pan Health & Wellness.

What is Le Pan?
Le Pan means HOPE in Chakfem language & dialects spoken in a number villages and communities in and around Chakefem District. The Initiatives aims to bring hope to these rural communities as they access good, affordable and sustainable evidence based care within the community.

Le Pan Story
The Burden: The idea of Le Pan Health & Wellness Initiatives has been incubating for many years. Several facts and events have helped to shape our thoughts and bring to the fore Le Pan Health and Wellness Initiatives.

Dr Dimulak Mwanmut was born and raised in the rural community of the Chakfem peoples in the neglected hilly and difficult to reach South Western regions of the Plateau State. In these parts of the country there is literally no Government presence. These poor rural communities have no access roads and no health facilities.

Growing up as a child in my village, Wubel, in Chakfem, one event, out of very many, has been engraved into my memory. One day my uncle was rushed back from a hunting trip. He was carried on the shoulder by several men. He had sustained and an abdominal injury and part of his intestines had protruded out of the abdominal cavity. Leaves from trees were used to protect the intestines from flies and the elements. There was no medical facility and there was no road or vehicle to rush him to the nearest hospital 40 kilometers away. My uncle was carried on the bare shoulders of young men on foot through the hills and valleys, streams and rivers to the nearest town to Wubel, 15 kilometers away. While they waited for the vehicle to come back from market in another town to take him to the hospital, my uncle died – most likely from dehydration, infection and death of the protruded intestines. His mortal remains were brought back in similar fashion and buried in the night. In nearly 60 years since that incident and far away from Wubel in the comfort of our home it has been difficulty to shake off this sad childhood memory.

As we have travelled back and forth to the village over the years to visit with family members we have had to deal with realities of live for these rural dweller that are not too dissimilar to my own experience on that fateful day. We have had to take delivery of babies with bare hands, sometimes using bush lamps, in dingy huts. We have had, in some instances, to transport women with birth injuries, sick children etc in our cars to the nearest health facilities 30 kilometres away. Many times we end up paying for the treatment as the patients are unable to afford the costs.