Rotary Club of Abuja Jabi Lakeside has offered free hepatitis screening, vaccination, counseling and referral to over 150 residents of the Kuchigoro community in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
President of Rotary Club Abuja Jabi Lakeside, Rotarian Olayinka Aduloju, during the medical outreach at the Chief’s Palace in Kuchigoro, said the outreach was in commemoration of the 2023 World Hepatitis Day.
According to Aduloju, the theme for 2023 Hepatitis Day is, ‘We are not waiting,’ and that Hepatitis is celebrated every July 28, so they were using the opportunity to reach out to their adopted community medically.
“We are sensitizing them on hepatitis, that this virus is a silent killer, that it does not give you signs and it does not have a cure. The best way to tackle this virus is to get the vaccine. We will screen them and we will vaccinate them and we are going to counsel and refer them if their case is beyond us.
“We also have plans to renovate five classrooms of LEA primary school in this community. It is a massive project which we are tagging to spend over N6m. We are also going to screen men in this community for prostate cancer.
“Our medical outreach is not about women and children alone, it is for everybody. Men, women, and children. We are also going to empower widows because that is also part of our project for this year,” she said.
The Rotary president urged privileged Nigerians and organisations to come and partner with Rotary to reach out to the less privileged people in the community to give them a sense of belonging in society.
“They should not leave everything to the government to do. We should do our past to impact the lives of the indigent people in the FCT. Even if they do not want to partner with Rotary, they should try to contribute their quota to reaching out to the less privileged in society,” she said.
The project chair for Rotary Club Abuja Jabi Lakeside, Rotarian Adeola Adekunke, also explained that they decided to take the free medical outreach to Kuchigoro community because they adopted the community over 10 years ago and have made sure that most of their projects get to the community.
The chief of Kuchigoro community, Chief Ibrahim Wambi, commended Rotary Club Abuja Jabi Lakeside for always considering residents of the community in their humanitarian services, calling on privileged Nigerians to partner with Rotary Club, for them to reach out to more indigent communities.