By Chimezie Godfrey
No fewer than 500 women and children have benefitted from free medical outreach in Guidna community in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.
The outreach was organised by Rotary clubs in District 9125; comprising of 12 Rotary clubs in Abuja and Silver Cross Hospital.
In her remarks, President, Rotary club of Abuja CBD, Rotarian Aisha Ali, said outreach which falls in the Rotary’s club seven areas of focus was to make high-quality health care available to vulnerable mothers and children so they can live longer and grow stronger.
According to Rotarian Aisha, the interventions was done to expand access to quality care, so mothers and children everywhere can have the same opportunities for a healthy future.
“An estimated 5.9 million children under the age of five die each year because of malnutrition, inadequate health care, and poor sanitation; all of which can be prevented,” she said.
Aisha also said Rotary provides education, immunizations, birth kits, and mobile health clinics.
“Women are taught how to prevent mother-to-infant HIV transmission, how to breast-feed, and how to protect themselves and their children from diseases,” she added.
On her part, Mrs Lovina Okorn-Ntui, the District Chair, Maternal and Child Health Committee, District 9125, said that the women received mosquito nets, free scan services, deworming of children, eye checks and distribution of eye glasses, among others.
“The outreach is in response to one area of focus of Rotary International which focuses on providing high-quality health care to vulnerable mothers and children.
“Owing to the economic situation in the country, the clubs decided to provide the medical intervention to the less- privileged and vulnerable groups that could not afford regular healthcare checks.
“The essence of today’s programme is to fulfill the area of focus as it concerns maternal and child health, safe delivery for women, safe breastfeeding for women and their children as well as healthy living for women and children.
“We will be enlightening them on safe delivery, issues surrounding safe breastfeeding as well as its importance.
“We will be giving them treatment for preventable diseases such as malaria fever, other common diseases that affect women and children, among others.
“We decided to come here because this is an indigent community and what Rotary preaches is to go to indigent communities to fill in the gap.
“There is no other health facility here aside this one, so we are collaborating with the owner to provide the necessary health services to the women and children,” she said.
Dr Patrick Ezie, the Chief Medical Director, Silver Cross Hospital, noted that the gesture was to assist the poor and needy in the community.
“We came together and decided that we need to flag-off this kind of intervention for women in rural communities because we identify that a lot of these women are not able to get the type of care that they want for basic problems.
“We will be providing free medical care for them, the health education is already going on, scan the pregnant women free of charge, carry out testing on HIV, hepatitis, syphilis, malaria, typhoid and we will provide drugs for them.
“All these medical intervention is for us to be able to nip in the bud some medical conditions that might be very serious.
“We will screen the women on cervical and breast cancer, any one that we notice has any issue, we will do our best to manage or refer to the appropriate level of care.
“So we want to use the little resources that we have to support these indigent communities,” he said.
Also, Mr Adesuwa Agbontaen, the President, Rotary Club of Asokoro and Chief Executive Officer, Eye Care Aid Foundation, noted that the medical intervention “is to give back to the society and assist indigent communities with basic healthcare services.
“One of the things that we do in Rotary is to carry out projects, as we have more than 44 clubs in Abuja and we are all doing one project or the other, which is carried out on weekly and on monthly basis,” he said.
Mrs Salamatu Musa, a beneficiary, appreciated the clubs and the hospital for organising the medical outreach in their community.
“They taught us many things, how to breast feed our babies when we give birth, how to take care of them properly and be neat” she said.
The event also featured health talk by Ms Victoria Soyomoku, the FCT Miss Nightingale 2023.
