Faith O. is one of our sex trafficking survivors who is in desperate need of a kidney transplant to stay alive.
With little education and abject poverty looming at her door, Faith was initially trafficked from Benin City, Nigeria to Libya in 2007 and then again to Russia in 2011. Upon arrival, she was told she owed $45,000 to her traffickers and was forced into sexual slavery as a prostitute. From 2011 until 2015, Faith was trapped in modern day slavery. Her life was not her own. Every penny she earned went towards paying down the $45,000 debt to her Madam who seized her passport and any means of contact with the outside world. Faith endured countless rapes, beatings, and assaults, from which she developed reoccurring kidney infections which went untreated, as her traffickers would not allow her to seek and obtain medical treatment. Notwithstanding the infections and her ailing health, her traffickers forced her to continue to “work” as a modern day slave. The infections progressed into kidney disease and just four days from death, she was discarded by her traffickers on the streets of Moscow.
A Good Samaritan found her and alerted one of her partners which paid for dialysis treatment to restore Faith back to life. When she was well enough, she returned back to Nigeria in November 2015 where we met her at the international airport in Lagos to transport her back to Benin. From November 2015 until early April 2016, PJI continued to pay for Faith’s weekly dialysis treatments and provided her with psychosocial support while we desperately sought a sponsor to provide the $35,000 needed for her to obtain a kidney transplant in India. Unfortunately, our allocated funds have been now exhausted and we have been unable to secure a sponsor. In the event Faith does not receive ongoing dialysis treatment and/or the transplant, she will likely die in the upcoming weeks.
Source: pathfindersji.org
