NYSC, IFAN To Boost Healthcare Services In Rural Areas

National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) has collaborated with the International Federation of Aging Nigeria (IFAN) to provide healthcare for community dwellers and the ageing through mobile hospitals and clinics.

Speaking yesterday during the Integrated National Mobile/ Field Hospital initiative for Humanitarian Intervention and Social Response Project/ Partnership outreach meeting, the director, Community Development Service and Special Projects (CDS/SP), Abdulrazaq Salawu, said the project would help in improving the lives of people at the grassroots, and in achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC) in the country.

He said the initiative was timely considering that 70 percent of Nigerians live in the rural communities and the increasing number of the aged.

He said that the NYSC boasts of graduates from all disciplines especially in the medical field who can adequately provide services wherever needed when the programme flags off.

He said the scheme is few of the government agencies that has lasted over the years since creation in 1973.

The national coordinator IFAN, Ike Willie-Nwobu who noted that the journey started in January 1999, said the national programme was aimed at utilizing extensively, the massive human capital deposit with the NYSC, in delivering health services in the most cost effective and efficient way.

He said: “It will be a health quick service support framework for universal health coverage, primary health care, roadside clinics and vehicle to deliver national health/humanitarian stand-by-force with capacity and content to Healthcare Entrepreneurship Initiative (HEI), poverty reduction and employment generation. We want to be one of those who have the largest hospitals in the country. How will this happen? Go and talk to Uber. They have the largest number of taxis in the world.

“The NYSC-IFAN mobile healthcare initiative will help to optimize/maximize our huge extensive diasporas; harness the skill/wisdom of senior medical/healthcare professionals through inter-generational relationship with the youth, and promote the culture of volunteerism, community development and corporate social responsibility in our national health care delivery- a major culture/system of developing and enhancing national resilience.”

He decried the pitiable situation where most rural dwellers in the country struggle to access medical facilities.

He noted that the Corps in its efforts to improve access, ensure doctors, pharmacists, laboratory scientists and Corp members in relevant fields were taken to a particular community within a local government area to treat health cases for the one year of their service to their fatherland.

Earlier, a director at the NYSC, Mrs Dick-Iruenabene Uforma, said over the years, the corps has proven to be a veritable vehicle for socio-economic mobilisation and an enduring catalyst which has continued to help develop every segment of our national life.