Lions Club to build N50m dialysis centre in Akure, praises Nigerian Xpress on effective reportage
Ayodele Olalere
The Lions Club, District 404 A1, has concluded plans to build a dialysis centre in Akure, Ondo State, as part of its humanitarian activities and gestures.
According to the District Governor, Lion Adekunle Adedoyin Adedipe, the centre would be built at the cost of N50 million and will cater for residents of Akure and nearby towns, while those on referral by Lions club will enjoy 80 per cent discount on cost of treatments.
During a courtesy visit at the corporate head office of The Nigerian Xpress Newspaper by the District Governor and his team, Lion Adedipe said the centre became necessary due to difficulties people of Akure, and its environs faces when searching for medical treatment. He also said its part of the District’s projects for 2019/2020.
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He added lack of dialysis centre in the ancient town has resulted into untimely deaths of cancer patients who had to travel long distance to Owo for dialysis. He further stated that the project is one of the five cardinal visions of Lions Club, adding the District has mapped out various programs to educate the masses on these visions.
“Our project for the year 2019 is to build a dialysis centre in Akure at the cost of N50milion. We have five focal points I Lions Club. The first vision is where we deal with preventable blindness. There are lots of people that have become blind but Lions Club has spent $1.4million to eradicate river blindness in Nigeria. The second is that we focus on diabetes. This is a silent killer so we make it a concern to deal with it through advocacy. We are doing our best to let people know their status. We are going to do a lot of trainings I six states. We are going to do street walks and distribute 250,000 handbills on diabetes alone,” he said.
According to him, other visions of the club are awareness on childhood cancer. “People don’t believe a child can have cancer. We are going to educate people that when their child has tumor, they should take the child to the hospital. We are also going to creates awareness o environment. To date, Lions Club has planted 100million trees all over the world. We also believe no one should go hungry so we will create awareness on this too. We are planning to feed about 2,000 persons who will be encouraged to feed 100 people each and at the end we would have succeeded in feeding 15,000 people,” he said.
He lamented lack of enough volunteers in Nigeria, saying out of the 250million Nigerians, only 12,000 are volunteers.
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Lion Adedipe commended the management of The Nigerian Xpress newspaper for being the first media organization to report their activities. He also praised the management for professional reportage of news and events, as well as boldness to operate in a harsh business environment such as Nigeria. He solicited for partnership with the newspaper for fruitful results.
“Together we can expand frontier of humanitarian service. You did the right thing when you took the bull by the horn. Many are afraid of tomorrow but you are bold. To come out of your comfort zone is ot an easy thing. I wish this relationship becomes symbiotic,’ he said.
In his response, the Managing Director, The Nigerian Xpress Newspaper, Mr Steve Nwosu, said the newspaper has come to stay and make its mark in the Nigeria media industry, adding the publication would soon hit the newsstand on daily basis.
“We felt we should take the bull by the horn. We are strong online and in interviews, feature and news. We want to stand out in news reportage, interviews and business,” he said.
