NAS Takes Free Medical Outreach to Delta Community

By Omon-Julius Onabu

There was relief for families and residents of Ogwashi-Uku, the administrative headquarters of Aniocha South Local Government Area of Delta State as the team of the National Association of Seadogs (NAS) visited the community to render free public healthcare services in line with the association’s deployment of routine medical outreach in communities across Nigeria.

Hundreds of Ogwashi-Uku residents, including women, expectant mothers, children, youths and the elderly, besieged the Primary Healthcare Centre in the town to take advantage of the free medical services brought you to their doorstep.

The free healthcare service by the NAS is coming at a critical period when public medical services in Nigeria have been disrupted by a fresh round of industrial action embarked upon by the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD).

President of NAS, otherwise known as the Pyrates Confraternity, Mr. Abiola Owoaje, said that the outreach was one of the humanitarian services of the association, adding that the medical service was at the primary level of healthcare.

He said that under the routine humanitarian service of the NAS, communities with visible health challenges but inadequate public healthcare facilities were selected from time to time to benefit from its medical outreach.

Owoaje said, “We provide medical intervention at the primary level. We have identified Ogwashi-Uku as a community to benefit from the healthcare intervention. We have so many professionals who are offering services in terms of medication.

“We do this regularly every three months, from one community to the other based on the need that we identify in such benefiting community.”

He said that aside other ailments like malaria and various fever, hypertension was the commonest condition of most of the residents who had come for the services.

However, opthalmologists and opticians were also attending to patients with visual problems with surgery and eyeglasses being given out free of charge.

Nevertheless, Owoaje lamented the hardships numerous poor Nigerians were subjected due to the incessant strike embarked on by different medical professionals and health providers in the country.

He decried the current strike by NARD and appealed for urgent resolution of the issues at stake to save the healthcare sector, urging doctors to understand that their profession is humanitarian in nature and borders on the lives of citizens most of who are helpless without their services.

“There is a dire need for medical services in the country. As you know, the doctors are on strike because of poor condition of service, and most Nigerians cannot afford what the private hospitals are charging,” he observed.

Obi of the kingdom, Ifechukwude Chukwuka Okonjo II, commended NAS for remembering Ogwashi-Uku in its routine medical outreach to the communities in the country.

The monarch, who was represented by the ‘Ihaza’ of the kingdom, Prof. Ikechukwu Onyemuwan, said that the free medical service was a welcome stop gap in healthcare services in the locality especially since the NARD embarked on strike again.

He said that residents of Ogwashi-Uku were overjoyed to receive the association and the opportunity to access quality healthcare service from qualified doctors and other medical professionals.

Some of the beneficiaries, who spoke with THISDAY expressed happiness at the opportunity to receive such standard healthcare services at no cost to them and profusely thanked the organisers, donors as well as medical and health personnel for the exercise.