Over 868 Lokoja residents benefit from Rotary Club’s free medical outreach

No fewer than 868 residents of the Lokoja community in the Local Local Government Area (LGA) of Kogi State have benefitted from the free health and medical outreach organised by the Rotary Club of Lokoja and Lokoja Metro.

The club embarked on a three-day medical outreach as part of its Rotary Family Health Day (RFHDs), the Rotary Family Health and Aids Prevention (RFHA) campaign.

The State Coordinator, Rotarian Grace Ben Kato, said they were screened for various ailments at the SUBEB Primary Healthcare and Angwan Yashi Primary Healthcare Centres.

According to her, the outreach was organised by the Rotary International body in collaboration with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to bring free health services to underserved communities.

Grace said that the 868 people in the communities were offered free health outreach, which included HIV screening and counselling, diabetes and hypertension, malaria screening and treatment, prostate cancer screening, deworming of children, vitamin A, B, and C, and multivitamins were also administered.

The three-day outreach she added sensitised the people on dental care with the distribution of toothbrushes, distribution of mosquito nets to the aged, pregnant, and nursing mothers, and distribution of sanitary pads to teenage girls.

She stressed the need for the government to increase the health budget and continue to partner with organisations for interventions on health care delivery in order to bring health services to the people.

She noted that the RFHDs, which is the second phase for the year, are part of Rotary International’s way of serving humanity and helping residents and indigenes of the adopted community, adding that the medical outreach was a way of giving back to the community.

She said, “We are here for the Rotary Family Health Day, which is carried out every year. Our club took it upon itself to come to this community, which is our adopted community, to share what we have with them. We targeted over 500 residents here. We came here with drugs; we came here with the nurses and the doctors who checked them and gave them the drugs.

“We checked their BP; we conducted malaria tests for them. Also, we checked their sugar levels. This is our service to humanity, and this is what we do for them as charity. We brought things that we could afford for them, and it doesn’t mean that it ends here.

One of the beneficiaries, Hafsat Musa, who spoke to The Graphic, thanked Rotary International for the free medical outreach in the community, which she said had helped them know their health status.

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