PIKCF Celebrates Five Years of Child Advocacy And Diabetes Awareness

Ferdinand Ekechukwu

Pamela Iweze Kingdom Children Foundation (PIKCF), as part of its anniversary plans this year, will celebrate five years of transformation and impact in the lives of children through advocacy, health and hygiene awareness in Lagos.

To commemorate the anniversary celebrations, it plans to organise a walk/fitness event starting in May this year.

Tagged “Walk For Diabetes” in collaboration with key stakeholders both local and international in the diabetes ecosystem, the objective of the year-long program is to use the universal symbol of sports and its ability to bring people together as a social vehicle for impact and mass awareness.

The founder of the Children Foundation, Pamela Iweze, who sheds light on people living with diabetes said: “The International Diabetes Federation (IDF) estimates that globally, more than 1.2 million young people under 20 years have type 1 diabetes and approximately 184,100 new cases are diagnosed each year.

“In another study in 2021, there were about 8·4 million individuals worldwide with type 1 diabetes: of these 1·5 million (18 per cent) were younger than 20 years.”

She added that “Here in Nigeria, over 5.8 per cent of the population are people living with diabetes. Sadly, diabetes awareness and screening programmes are very few across most states in Nigeria.”

The foundation has been involved in advocacy and awareness projects centred around health and hygiene in local communities for five years now.

PIKCF has organised events and collaborated with local community development associations CDA and the Nigeria Army via its command secondary schools in Ojo Military Cantonment.

In 2019, it organised a Dental hygiene program on children’s day to educate and enlighten the students on oral hygiene. Over 350 students attended and benefited from the lecture.

In 2021, in conjunction with the Nigeria Army, it engaged over 700 secondary school girls from Command Secondary school Ojo in a menstrual hygiene programme tagged Pad a Girl Child.

The girls were enlightened on the importance of genital care and menstrual hygiene. Last year, it teamed up with the CDAs in the Agbado Oke Odo Local Community Development area in Lagos.

This time, it organised a health outreach and awareness program to sensitize people on the chronic disease called Diabetes and the steps to take to manage it.