Folusho Adeosun Journey From a Dream He Carried for 20 Years to a Mission to Build a Better Future for Sickle Cell Warriors in Nigeria
Published: 28 Aug 2026
For 22 years, Folusho Adeosun kept waiting for an ending that never came.
He had already lost his younger brother, Ibukun, to sickle cell disease when Ibukun was just 12. Folusho fought the same disease himself, crisis after crisis, year after year, until there was a stretch where he simply stopped fighting. He decided to take life one day at a time and prepared himself for the worst.
The worst never happened.
So he asked himself a question: if he wasn’t dying, what was he doing with the time he had?
That question became MAHI.
Through the Mo’sho Adeosun Health Initiative (MAHI), Folusho works to make sickle cell care easier to access in Nigeria. That means the information people need to understand the disease, and the hospitals and money they need to actually get treated.
MAHI is new but the idea behind it is not. Folusho had been carrying it for 20 years before he built it.
A Twenty Year Old Dream
The idea for MAHI first took shape in Folusho’s mind in 2004, the year he graduated from Babcock University, Nigeria. MAHI itself wasn’t founded until December 2024.
He kept waiting until he had everything figured out before starting, but that moment never came. The push he needed came from an unexpected place.
After undergoing knee surgery, Folusho met a physiotherapist, Ochukwu Obaseki. During one of their conversations, Folusho mentioned the health initiative he had always intended to start.
Obaseki didn’t let him leave it there. Together, they began working on a founding plan. There was just one problem. Folusho didn’t have the means to formally register a nonprofit. So he did something much simpler.
He changed his LinkedIn title to Founder, Mo’sho Adeosun Health Initiative and something unexpected happened. People started congratulating him and responding as though MAHI already existed.
That encouragement gave Folusho momentum, so he kept going.
One outreach became another. One conversation became a campaign. Eventually came MAHI’s first summit and its early initiatives. A dream that had waited twenty years had finally become something people could see.
Building the Care He Wishes More People Had
At the heart of MAHI is a question Folusho keeps returning to. How do you close the gap between what people with sickle cell disease need and what they can actually access?
For Folusho, that gap is something he has lived through. That is why much of MAHI’s work begins at the grassroots.
The organization takes sickle cell education beyond conventional health spaces and into marketplaces, roadsides, and communities where people may have limited access to formal health information.
The goal is to help individuals understand their genotype, particularly before marriage, so they can make informed decisions about their families and futures.
MAHI also develops resource materials designed to make sickle cell information easier to understand and use.
“There is still a gap between the treatments available and the information warriors and caregivers need to navigate a crisis. That’s part of why I create resources people can access even when I’m not there.”
Folusho has authored several books as part of these warrior resources. Among them is a triage protocol toolkit built for emergency departments treating sickle cell patients, and another that addresses dating and relationships with sickle cell.
Folusho draws heavily from his own experiences, turning lessons that once came from surviving crisis after crisis into information that can help someone else navigate theirs.
But perhaps the most ambitious part of MAHI’s work is what it is building around access to care.
The organization is developing a mobile app and care plan system built around a network of SCD equipped partner hospitals.
The vision is to create a hub and spoke system where people living with sickle cell disease can access appropriate care without having to travel excessively far, with a goal of keeping patients within roughly 30 minutes of an equipped facility.
Then there is the financial question.
Even when the right hospital exists nearby, cost can still stand between a patient and the care they need.
MAHI is also working toward a contribution based care plan designed to help patients prepare financially for care before a crisis occurs.
And where a patient’s plan cannot cover the full cost, MAHI is working to develop hospital partnerships that can help subsidize the gap for patients who have remained consistent with their care.
It is an attempt to address sickle cell care from multiple directions at once: knowledge, proximity, preparedness, and affordability.
Folusho’s story isn’t just that he survived sickle cell disease. It’s that he chose to turn that survival into something that could help other people live better too, building MAHI step by step, from the ground up.
