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Red Cross restructures to boost medical services

By Stanley Akpunonu
17 May 2018   |   2:22 am
To mark the World Red Cross Day (WRCD), The Nigerian Red Cross Society (NRCS) has outlined measures to optimise and strengthen its work across the country. President, NRCS, Bolaji Anani, said the change is paramount because the NRCS is getting lost in the mind of the people.

Nigerian Red Cross Society

To mark the World Red Cross Day (WRCD), The Nigerian Red Cross Society (NRCS) has outlined measures to optimise and strengthen its work across the country. President, NRCS, Bolaji Anani, said the change is paramount because the NRCS is getting lost in the mind of the people.

As part of its efforts to restructure the society, Anani said that the board elected two and half years ago inherited a fractured national society, propelling them to develop new systems and capacities in the way of developing new policies, guidelines, tool and also sanctions for anyone that falls out of line.He stated that, apart from the new system in place, new personnel were also recruited to the headquarters thereby enabling new strategies and partnerships from International communities and cooperative societies.

The president explained the partnership would help in delivering medical services in hospitals and crossroads and some would also help in delivery of first aid training through the Internet services and social media.

Anani added: “2017 in the North East, with the help of International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC) we were able to reach over three million people in different ways. Across the country, we have delivered message that supported the wellness of the people. We also created a website, www.redcrossnigeria.org so as to see a new picture of NRCS. This has led to NRCS having an open registration for new membership regardless of status.”

Meanwhile, ICRC Head of Delegation in Nigeria, Eloi Fillion said the NRCS through its volunteer are part of the people to attend to the need of people affected by disasters and different forms of violence. Fillion said the ICRC is present in the country to attend to need of people affected by violence and insurgency in the northeast and also to provide support in different areas and even reuniting families separated by violence

Chief Operating Officer, Kunoch Limited, Kelechi Dozie said they realize that NRCS has been doing much for Nigerians, giving their time to incidents. Dozie said it is necessary to partner with NRCS because the work they do is quiet. “We partner with them to make the good work known, all they need is technology as catalyst to let people know what they do. The website is built to international standard and to increase the volunteer base. We hope the rest of Nigeria will get involved.”

He added that the website is an effective way to get donations and also serves as platform to communicate among them, enhance strategy marketing and media, and create awareness for basic health

Anani continued: “NRCS is a humanitarian community based organization. Community based because we exist all over the country especially where we know that vulnerabilities are high. We have the greatest reach as humanitarian organization and our members and volunteers are everywhere and that makes us first respondent to situation that develops crisis. We have the resilience building; Red Cross members and volunteers may not be there all the time because our membership does not include everyone of the population. Some of these occurrences can happen where the Red Cross is not around. So we try to build resilience in the minds of the people of the community to be able to do something for themselves before Red Cross comes.

We also prepare the people by way of education, we send out messages in a way that will help us develop wellness and help us in terms of disasters. We also give out early warning to people where impeding diseases or disaster is.”The NRCS boss highlighted that they are subsidiary to the government as it was established with the act of parliament in 1960, revealing that they collaborate with government through its Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs) that are involved in humanitarian work.

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