Rotary International at the weekend took healthcare services to communities across the country under its Rotary Family Health Days scheme.

In Abuja, over 5000 residents of Abuja benefitted from the three-day event, which took place across the nation’s capital.

Rotary Family Health Days is the signature program of Rotarians for Family Health & AIDS Prevention (RFHA). The programme promotes healthy living and disease prevention by implementing a massive, annual campaign in four countries in Africa that provides comprehensive, free health care services tens of thousands of people in underprivileged communities.

The services include lifelong immunizations to children, such as polio and measles vaccines and comprehensive life-saving annual screens such as Human Immuno-deficiency Virus (HIV), tuberculosis (TB), malaria, diabetes, hypertension and more.

Speaking at one of the centres where the program took place in Abuja, District Governor, Rotary International, District 9125 Nigeria, Dr. Mike Omotosho, described screening as a very crucial if one is to stay and remain healthy.

He called attention to disease he described as silent killers which were killing people without symptoms, noting that “we have to know what to do if we have to live with the realities of our time.”

Represented by former Chief Medical Director of the National Hospital, Abuja, Dr. Segun Ajuwon, Omotosho, noted how Rotarians are encouraged to take health care services to the people across the country so as to prevent most diseases.

Coordinator of the project in Abuja, Lynda Ihuoma Nwadioha, said the organization targeted 5,000 beneficiaries across the communities in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

She said: “We want to take health care to the domain of every community in the FCT. We have eight different sites in Abuja manned by seasoned healthcare professionals and reaching out particularly to rural woman and her children. That is basically our target.

“We want to help scourge any health challenge in the society in our women, youths and children.”