Professor Adewole: Nigeria’s minister of health

The Moole Charity Foundation, a non-profit organisation, has appealed to politicians and well-meaning individuals to help provide healthcare services to the rural populace, and end challenges of public health in Nigeria.

Spokesperson of the Foundation, Dr Victor Orajiaku, made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Saturday, in Abuja.

Orajiaku, a public health physician, said many Nigerian rural populace were facing series of public health challenges, because they had no money.

He said that recent free medical outreaches conducted by the foundation in some villages, revealed that a large population of rural areas still suffered from high rate of communicable diseases.

He said that the prevalence of communicable diseases among the rural poor such as diarrhoea, malnutrition and skin diseases was worrisome.

“The health challenges facing the rural populace are too numerous; for some people, they do not have money to afford healthcare.

“This is because healthcare services are becoming too expensive for ordinary Nigerians.

“In our recent free medical outreaches, where we screened about 5,000 people of different conditions including diabetes, hypertension, sugar level and hepatitis B and C among others. We also referred them to some hospitals.

“We discovered that the majority of them could not afford the treatments due to lack of money.

“I am appealing to well-meaning Nigerians, the politicians, the representatives members and the senators alike, to come to the aid of these rural populace to lend a helping hand in the area of healthcare,’’ he said.

Orajiaku lamented government’s inability to enlist the rural populace into its National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).

“It is very unfortunate that government claims to lack capacity to provide all that citizens need to enjoy better healthcare, such as social amenities, and also the delay to enlist rural populace into NHIS.

“These individuals can liaise and partner with NGOs that are championing health inclined services by organising free health outreaches to screen and treat these vulnerable people of these diseases.

“By so doing they can halt the spread, and also reduce the burdens and put smiles on these indigent people faces,’’ he said.

He went further that, “This people need to be educated health wise, because their behaviours of defecating into their sources of water put them in a higher risk of contracting these diseases.

“That is the reason most of them often suffer diarrhoea, bacterial infections, worm infestations, and children malnutrition’’ he said.