Our 20th Year – How We Began and Where We Are Now

The idea of Kateri Medical Services began 20 years ago.  In February of 2002, a team of three (John Hart, Jim Lawson and Rev. Tom Furrer) traveled to Nigeria at the invitation of Bishop Josiah Idowu-Fearon, who was then the Bishop of Kaduna.

We were shown some empty buildings in the village of Kateri.  Bishop Josiah told us that they hoped to start a rural medical clinic there. They owned the buildings but had no funds to pay doctors and nurses. We came back to Connecticut with the inspiration to raise the funds for one doctor and two nurses. In May of 2003, we held our first fund-raiser and raised $45,000 in pledges – enough to run the clinic for three years. Shortly thereafter, Kateri Clinic opened and has run ever since. It now serves about 5,000 patients every year.

Image: Medical staff at clinics

More clinics every year since 2016.

​In 2016, we opened our second clinic in Iburu – the Nancy Mason Memorial Clinic. In 2018, we opened our third clinic, The Arthur and Esther Bradley Memorial Anglican Hospital in Gidan Waya. Later in 2018, we opened Graceland Hospital in Gidan Waya.  In 2019, we began a partnership with St. Thomas Clinic in Port Harcourt. In 2020, we began a partnership to reopen a closed facility, the B.B. Ayam Clinic in Bari. In 2021, we began a partnership to rebuild three dilapidated clinics in Kebbi state. In 2022, we began work on the Susan Ober Hospital in Ikara.

We now have six fully-operational clinics, three “fixer-upper” medical facilities in which we are training the workers and will soon begin building new clinics, one new clinic under construction and one more in the long-term planning stages, for a total of 11 clinics.

The Good News is …We have money in the bank for all five of the new clinic buildings.

Thanks to the overwhelming generosity of some of our major donors, we have funds to build and equip all five of our new clinic buildings.
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The Challenging News is… We need to raise funds to pay for doctors, nurses, midwives, CHEWs (Community Health Extension Workers) and support staff to operate our clinics.

We currently have 3 years of salaries “in the bank” to cover our six operational clinics. With each new clinic, we need to add to our reserve account to cover salaries for the new clinics.

Our reserve fund for salaries is called “The New Horizons Fund”.  

We are asking all of our friends and supporters to give as generously as you can to help us build this fund to cover all of our clinics.