By Chibuzo Ihegboro
District 9110 of the Rotary Club of Lekki Phase 1 has demonstrated its dedication to human service through its free health care services rendered to residents of Agbara Mayeigun community of Lagos state.
The club, in partnership with Chike Okoli Foundation and the Health Department of Eti Osa Local Government conducted free health checks for 100 residents of Agbara Mayeigun community.
Changemaker President, District 9110, Lekki Phase 1, Ifeoma Anieze Corona explained that the outreach was organized as a project to execute one of the seven areas of focus of the Rotary Club which is Health.” Today we are providing health checks; sugar, blood pressure and eye checks for the residents here at Gbara Mayeigun community. We are executing this project in conjunction with Chike Okoli Foundation who provided the doctors and the drugs. We are here to examine them and give them some medications and sunglasses. So far, we have attended to 80 people and we are looking to attend to a minimum of 100 people today in this community. After attending to them, we will also give them mosquito nets to prevent malaria.
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“We have been doing this in this community for a long time.Most of the people in this community cannot afford the cheapest healthcare services. If you visit these communities to see the environments where they live, you will know that they really need it. If you really want to touch lives, do things for people that cannot afford it.
“We will be giving out 250 mosquito nets today and 150 eye glasses. Some of them don’t even know that they have a high blood pressure and high blood sugar, sometimes we have to refer them to doctors but then we give them remedial treatment.
“My advice to them is that they should visit primary health centers at least once in a while to carry out checks, this will help to prevent the diseases from getting worse because if you detect early that you have certain problems, you will know the remedy for it but most of them don’t, so you just see that people slump and sometimes it’s too late.
“The best thing that can happen to you as a human being and a Rotarian is making other people smile and giving is part of it. I like giving and being in Rotary has helped me enlarge my coast and the best thing that can happen to you is giving to people that will never get to say thank you.”
Programme Co-ordinator for Chike Okoli Foundation, Oby Adimachukwu, explained that the club was inaugurated in honour of Late Chike Okoli, who died of cardiovascular diseases.”The Foundation is owned by Emzor Pharmaceuticals and was set up in remembrance of of late Chike. We partner with the Rotary Club every year to create awareness about cardiovascular diseases because most people don’t know that they have such problems so we carry out free test screenings for them.In extreme cases, we refer them to our cardiologist.
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“We create awareness about their lifestyles, the food they eat, and the importance of exercise. The Foundation has been in existence for 15 year and this is our first outreach after the Covid-19 outbreak.”
Project Chair of the Rotary Club, Dr. Lateef Olawale Ogungbemi added, ” We are distributing free mosquito nets because we want to prevent malaria among women in this community and children because they are close to the riverine area. Also, most non-communicable diseases like Hypertension and Diabetes are not easily detected, that’s the reason why we do this. Majority of the people in this community are elderly and we advise them to do routine checks. It is important for the government to intervene in communities with elderly people like this, through the primary health care centres.”
An elderly woman and beneficiary of the health outreach, Samiat Alatishe expressed gratitude to the organizers after the exercise. “They checked my eyes and gave me an eye-glass. They said I had fever and cough and gave me drugs. I have prayed for them that God will continue to provide for them.”