NYSC, IFAN mull mobile hospital services nationwide for rural dwellers

The National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) has unveiled a mobile healthcare service initiative intended to cater for the interests of people living in rural communities in the country.

The initiative christened Integrated National Mobile/Field Hospital Initiative for Humanitarian Intervention and Social Response Project/Partnership Outreach was unveiled in partnership with International Federation on Ageing Nigeria (IFAN).

Shortly after the inauguration in Abuja, NYSC Director for Community Development and Special Projects, Abdulrazaque Salahu 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.

Salahu said the reason for embarking on the initiative was to utilize the knowledge base in the NYSC scheme to further enhance the health and well-being of our people, especially those living the areas without adequate healthcare.

He said: “What we do at NYSC do because we have many of these children who are doctors, pharmacists and laboratory scientists is to pull them together both those that studied in Nigeria and abroad to undertake medical outreach visiting communities and administering medical services to the people.”

He said that what the NYSC “does is to first sensitise the people about the programme, letting them know that they are coming to attend to their medical needs.”

He said the Corp members usually manage with any accommodation the community can provide them in order to carry out the medical mission.

Salahu said the experience had been very revealing just as it has exposed salient issues regarding gaps in healthcare delivery in the country.

For instance, he said that his experience at one of such outreach programmes in a community in Plateau state saw the team discovering so many people infected with HIV just within the first day of the week-long programme.

“After the opening ceremony and we started tests, do you believe that the results came, in just one hour we saw that over 30 people were infected with HIV and they didn’t know. So immediately we sent a report to the governor for the authorities to intervene and take necessary measures to arrest the spread”.

Salahu said that NYSC is ready to offer healthcare services to rural dwellers but that it requires the support of the federal, state, LGA and private sector organisations to sustain the laudable initiative.

On his part, the President of IFAN, Mr Ike Nwobu said the overall mission of the health initiative is to utilize the human capital, organisational capacity and extensive network of the NYSC towards improving on the delivery of national healthcare service to the people, particularly in areas lacking hospital infrastructure.

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, poverty reduction and employment generation.

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

“The medical outreach initiative has the capacity to bring about an unprecedented turnaround in the healthcare delivery system and attainment of the universal health coverage in Nigeria.”