The residents of old Dagbana Community in Nasarawa State, a suburb of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT),
on Tuesday, benefited from a free medical outreach organised by Help Initiative Initiative, an NGO.
The Convener and Chairman, Board of Trustee of the initiative, Mr Onoja Ikojo, said that the event was designed to mark the 2020 World AIDS Day, annually
celebrated on Dec. 1 around the globe.
Ikojo said that the medical outreach, which started in 2019, was timely intervention of the NGO for people of old Dagbana, aimed at combating diseases in the community.
He added that “the outreach covers malaria testing, HIV testing, Hepatitis A, B and C testing, counselling and other services, including referrals.
The chairman explained that the NGO’s activities covered states like Kogi, Nasarawa and FCT in various areas of interventions.
He said the activities were to enhance the status of communities where children, women and youths, especially the marginalised and less privileged, lived
in hunger, ill-health, HIV/AIDs without sustainable means of livelihood.
He said “we organised the free medical outreach to help the poor and the less privileged. We do it twice in a year; we are here to give the people of
old Dagbana the needed medical support and to give them a better and healthy future.
“Our thematic areas cover health, education, environment, politics and good governance; we also focus on children, especially orphans and the vulnerable
ones, as well as women and youths.”
The group’s Programme Manager, Mr Onoja Bobby, noted that the NGO was on ground with a team of medical doctors and nurses to help in the area
of diagnoses and to administer drugs where necessary.
He explained that the group considered the medical outreach as timely, going by the hardships caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Executive Director of the initiative, Mr Jonah Agbaji, said that the organisation had the passion to provide health services for the people,
especially in the rural areas.
According to him, the NGO is prompted to choose old Dagbana because of the interior nature of the area, which the organisation view as difficult
to reach out to in terms of medical facilities.
“We felt that health services are far from these people, so we decided to bring it closer to them,”Agbaji said. (NAN)