Veteran actor, Sadiq Daba is currently struggling with health issues with a public appeal being made to well-meaning Nigerians to come to his aid.
It is no longer news that seasoned broadcaster and actor, Sadiq Daba, is down with leukaemia. Unknown to many of his fans and admirers, the actor, whose role in Kunle Afolayan’s award-winning film, ‘October 1’, attracted a lot of attention awhile ago, practically lives on a drug called Gleevec, used for the treatment of the disease.
Although he gets supplies of the drug free-of-charge from the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, courtesy of a donor agency based in the United States, it is very expensive off the counter and can only be obtained from the institution.
“To get the drug at OAU, you have to go through a process of evaluation. Then you are recommended to the foundation that supplies the drug. But, if you are going to buy it off the counter, a pack of it will cost you about N1.7m. And this will last for three months,” he said, in an interview within his Lagos residence.
Daba’s battle with leukaemia started toward the end of 2015. The disease virtually caught him unawares. At first, he had thought that he was having the first symptoms of a minor ailment.
“I thought I had malaria fever. So I went to a hospital in Abuja for a test. After a series of tests, the doctor was shocked. He told me that what I had was beyond them at the hospital. He advised me to seek help from a tertiary institution. The tertiary institution, in this case, simply refers me to a university teaching hospital. That was in 2015.
