One woman's mission is to help her daughter and others

Although Babatunde Fashola, popularly known as Baba, is 22 years old, his height is less than 70 cm (2 ft 4 in).

He suffers from cerebral palsy and needs lifelong care. He cannot speak or walk and is fed through a tube connected to his stomach.

As a baby, his parents abandoned him, but 10 years ago, he found a home at a cerebral palsy center in the Nigerian city of Lagos.

“Baba weighs about 12 kilograms (26 pounds). Baba weighs about 12 kilograms (26 pounds),” the facility’s founder, Noni Nweke, told me when I visited the hospital. “He is in good health.”

Ms Nowicki and her staff are working around the clock to support him and other young people with permanent brain damage.

Although there is no official data, cerebral palsy is believed to be one of the most common neurological disorders in Nigeria. In 2017, A professor of medicine from the University of Lagos said that 700,000 people suffer from this condition.

For many people with cerebral palsy in the country, the cause of their condition is a common phenomenon among newborns – Neonatal jaundice.

This is caused by the accumulation of bilirubin, a yellow substance, in the blood, which means that babies' skin has a yellow tinge.

Professor Chinyere Esiaka, a pediatrician at Lagos University Teaching Hospital, told the BBC that more than 60% of children suffer from jaundice.

Most children recover within days. More serious cases require more medical intervention – and even then the condition can be easily treated.

Children are primarily exposed to ultraviolet light to dissolve excess bilirubin in red blood cells. Treatment continues for a few days depending on the severity of the disease.

However, this treatment is often not immediately available in Nigeria, which is why the country is among the five countries with the most neurological disorders caused by untreated jaundice in the world, according to World Health Organization data.

Any treatment for neonatal jaundice “must occur within the first 10 days of life, otherwise (the condition) can cause permanent brain damage and severe cerebral palsy,” says Professor Eziaka.

To make matters worse, the West African country lacks facilities to care for people with neurological disorders. There are only three cerebral palsy centres, all privately run, in Nigeria, which has a population of more than 200 million.

Ms Nweke, a single mother, set up a cerebral palsy center after struggling to find support for her daughter, Zimuzo.

“When I took her to a daycare centre, they asked me to take her back because other mothers might withdraw their children. As a mother, I have to say it was very devastating,” Nowicki told the BBC.

Zimuzo is now 17, and Ms Nweke's Cerebral Palsy Center provides full-time support to others with similar experiences.

On the day of my visit, colorful playtime mats and toys are neatly arranged on the floor. Mickey Mouse and his friends talking on a widescreen TV in the lounge.

Twelve young people, some as young as five years old, stared at the television, their bright surroundings ignored for a moment. They are all still and do not speak.

At lunchtime, caregivers help the little ones eat. Some people take liquid food through tubes connected to their stomachs.

Carefully and slowly, caregivers Prop their heads with pillows and push the contents of their syringes into the tubes.

The young are fed every two hours and need regular muscle massage to prevent stiffness.

But they are the lucky 12 to receive free care from the Cerebral Palsy Center, which is funded exclusively by donors.

The facility has a long waiting list – Ms Nowicki has received more than 100 applications.

But accepting more young people will require additional financial support. It costs at least $1,000 (£790) a month to care for someone at the centre, a huge sum in a country where the national minimum wage is about $540 a year.

“As a mother, I have to say it is very stressful,” says Ms Nowicki. “You have moments of depression, it gives you heartache, and it is very expensive – in fact it is the most expensive congenital disorder that can be treated.”

“And of course it keeps you away from people because you're not discussing the same things. They're talking about their kids, walking, enjoying those childhood moments. You're not doing that. You're sad,” she adds.

Mrs. Nweke explains that she adopted Zimuzo from an orphanage.

A few months after taking her new daughter home, Ms Nweke realized that Zimuzo was not developing in the same way as the children around her. She was evaluated at the hospital and diagnosed with cerebral palsy.

Ms Nweke was told she could take Zimuzo, who was only a few months old, to the orphanage and adopt another child instead, but she refused.

“I decided to keep it and started researching the cause of this disorder, the treatment and what kind of care my child needs – it is my life.

“The doctors also told me that she would not live more than two years,” says Ms. Nowicki, smiling. “Well, here we are – 17 years later.”

Lack of awareness and appropriate medical support hampers the diagnosis and treatment of neonatal jaundice in Nigeria.

Ms. Nowicki also says the common local belief that children with congenital disorders are spiritually damaged or enchanted leads to stigma.

Some children with neurological disorders – mostly in rural areas of Nigeria – are called witches. In some cases, they are abandoned in houses of prayer or expelled from their families.

Ms. Nowicki is not alone in her mission to dispel myths and improve care.

The Oscar Project – a charity aiming to improve the diagnosis and treatment of neonatal jaundice – recently began work in Lagos.

The project is named after Vietnamese-born British disability advocate Oscar Anderson, whose untreated jaundice left him with cerebral palsy.

“We are equipping health facilities at primary, secondary and tertiary levels with the necessary equipment to treat jaundice, especially light boxes, but also detection and screening equipment,” Toyin Saraki, who oversaw the launch, told the BBC.

Project Oscar, supported by Reckitt Consumer Health, is training 300 health workers in Lagos. The hope within the first year is to reach 10,000 mothers, screen 9,000 babies and introduce new protocols to try to prevent babies with jaundice from developing cerebral palsy.

In a country with an overstretched public health system, the government has little to say about the turmoil, although it has praised the goals of Project Oscar.

Doctors say that treating neonatal jaundice is much cheaper than the cost of lifelong care.

Project Oscar was first launched in Vietnam in 2019 and has helped around 150,000 children in the Asian country.

Mr Anderson, 22, says he wants to prevent other children from experiencing what he went through.

“People with disabilities should not be underestimated,” he told the BBC.

It works to ensure that every newborn is screened for neonatal jaundice and, with the support and courage of mothers, midwives and medical professionals, ensures there is better understanding and faster treatment.

However, achieving this is an extremely ambitious goal in Africa's most populous country, where thousands of babies are born every year with neonatal jaundice.

Regardless, Mr. Anderson is determined to defy the odds.

“The work doesn’t stop until every baby is protected from neonatal jaundice,” he says.