Who we are
Amaibima Foundation
Co-founders Drs. Sobomabo and Alaro Lawson both grew up in Buguma, a small town in Nigeria’s Niger Delta region. Throughout their youth, they saw first-hand how their families and friends suffered from the community’s lack of healthcare infrastructure and resources.
When they immigrated to the United States to attend university, they both pursued careers in the bio-medical field with the goal of one day using their skills and knowledge to improve access to adequate healthcare to their community in Nigeria.
Starting in 2017, the Lawsons began leading annual medical outreach trips providing free healthcare and education to rural towns and villages. Drawing on a corps of volunteer practitioners with specialties ranging from ophthalmology to obstetrics, these outreach trips treated over 3,000 patients. But every year it became clearer that there was more to do. Drawing on their years of experience running these medical outreach trips, the Lawsons started the Amaibima Foundation.
Amaibima is a word in the Lawson’s native tongue, Kalabari, meaning “to improve the community or town.” The mission of the Amaibima Foundation is to help improve the health of the neediest amongst by providing comprehensive free medical services and health education. The Foundation’s goal is to build and enhance local capacity by supporting the construction and outfitting of local clinics that can provide year-round services, distributing medical equipment and supplies, providing health education to mitigate preventable illnesses.
Amaibima Foundation is a 501(c)3 organization.
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Campaigns
3,000+
Happy People We Have Helped
50+
Our Volunteers
Seattle Emergency Clinician Brings Ultrasound To Rural Nigeria
Alaro Lawson DNP, emergency room provider at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, returned from a medical mission to Bakana, Nigeria on behalf of the Kalabari National Association (KNA). She took with her two Sonosite Edge portable ultrasound machines, accompanied with C60x, HFL38X, HFL50X, ICTx, L25x, L38xi, P10x, C11x, and P21x transducers, provided by Sonosite’s Global Health Loaner Pool. This is the fourth year KNA has partnered with local Nigerian organizations to provide free healthcare to residents in rural, often neglected communities in the Niger Delta region. Alaro described the challenges facing the remote village of Bakana:
“Bakana is a small village in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. It is only accessible by boat, and the only motor vehicles are motorcycles that a few residents use to help transport the elderly—or those in a rush—get from the far end of the island to the other. This year, just as with the past three years, there has been a desperate need for ultrasound equipment. Typically, the island doesn’t have such machines at all, and those that travel into the city seeking medical advice find that they can’t afford it.”