A Non-governmental Organisation, Heritage Advancement Forum (HAF), has embarked on an impactful outreach in Ogombo community Ajah, Lagos, a rural community where access to essential health services remains a significant challenge.
The outreach was designed to address critical gaps in healthcare access and awareness, particularly in underserved areas.
The President of HAF, Mr Anegbode Odion, said the outreach resonated with the vision and mission of the organisation, to give back to the society and help the government in bridging healthcare gap in Nigeria.
He explained that the outreach featured health talk, diagnosis, treatment and preventive healthcare for women and children to assess their health needs.
“This outreach represents a vital step in our mission to revolutionise access to healthcare in underserved communities.
“Healthcare remains a fundamental necessity, particularly in underserved communities where access to medical services is limited.
“Recognising this need, HAF organised a medical outreach at Ogombo Community, Ajah, providing free healthcare services.
“Over 414 people including men, women and children benefited from the free medical services such as health screening, eye screening and medication, eye checks, malaria and glucose level screening as well as Blood Pressure checks.
“The programme, which started in the morning, has had a large turnout of people, both old and young,” Odion said.
Speaking, the Vice-President of HAF, Mr Marvel Omorodion, underscored the need for massive education and sensitisation campaigns particularly at the rural communities to educate them on healthy lifestyle modifications.
He decried that many people lacked the knowledge of good lifestyle habits to maintain healthy living, saying it was a major contributing factors to the health conditions face by some people.
Omorodion, who identified funding as a major challenge, said that if the government could support the organisation with financial support and grants, it would enable the organisation to do more outreaches, as well as massive sensitisation programmes on healthy lifestyles.
The Head of HAF Medical Team, Dr Gerald Chinasa, urged the residents to take their health serious and always go for medical check-up, particularly to check the BP level.k
Chinasa, also a consulting doctor at the outreach, identified ignorance as major contributory factor to health conditions of most Nigerian adults, as many people with high blood pressure were not even aware.
According to him, high blood pressure is the leading cause of death among young adults, saying that regular check on it can help to avert some critical conditions that may lead to death.
He recommended that every family should have the blood pressure testing apparatus, to enable the adults in the family keep a regular check on their BP.
“Every family is supposed to have the BP testing apparatus to enable them maintain a regular check on their BP status.
“The truth is that everybody who is 35 years and above, whether man or woman should have the BP apparatus at home.
“Infact, these day we are seeing people in their 20s being hypertensive.
“So, I recommend more sensitisation on hypertension for the community, because information is key and people needs to be informed.
“There are some patients that we recommended for them to go to hospital immediately for admission because these people came with BP that were too high that could not be measured by the BP machine.
“Those kind of BP are considered time-bomb as anything can happen at anytime,” Chinasa said.
A beneficiary of the outreach, Mrs Oluwakemi Adams, appreciated the organisation for the outreach that provided opportunity for many indigent citizens to access healthcare.
Adams, who described the outreach as an “eye opener that revealed her health condition, said she was not aware that she was hypertensive until he consulted with the doctor at the outreach.
She said that access to healthcare services was a big challenge to most residents of the community due to poverty.
She, therefore, urged the state government to intensify efforts toward making healthcare services available, affordable and accessible to people of the community.
She said, “The economic condition and hardships in the country is taking toll on the residents; the people are stressed out and have little or no money to cater for their needs.
“A lot of people here do not have money to buy drugs when sick or even go to the hospital,” she said.
