By Chioma OBINNA

EVEN as an estimated 500 Nigerians benefited from the free health screening organised by the Catholic Chaplaincy Centre of the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH)/College of Medicine University of Lagos (CMUL)’s 2010 Health Education and Health Service Day in Lagos,  Nigerians have been urged to take responsibility for their health.

Officiating priest of the  Chaplaincy,  Rev. Father Chioma Nwosu who gave the charge during the programme tagged; “Kidney Diseases, Prevention Rather than Cure” held in collaboration with Rotary Club of Victoria Island, District 9110 and Chike Okoli Foundation explained that the annual programme was aimed at creating health care awareness among individuals and communities with the aim of encouraging a personal responsibility for one’s health.

Nwosu said people can live a healthy life by taken personal responsibilities for their health. The programme which began in 2002,was designed to emphasise more on prevention of diseases, most of which occur as a result of negligence.

Linking the health exercise to the workings of Jesus Christ, he said “It is all part of the message of Jesus Christ who spent so much time curing people of diseases, performing miracles. We may not perform miracles as such as Jesus did. In the time of Jesus, science was not really as we have it today. The gift of science is God’s. We integrate the scientific knowledge to the proclamation of the gospel so that individuals and the community can live a healthy life as God desires for them.”

LUTH’s Head  of Cardiology and  Board Member, Chike Okoli Foundation,Dr. Jayne Ajuluchkwu regretted that blood pressure in the communities used to be 12 -15 percent but was now 20 percent.

Rotary’s involvement is part of strategies to roll its campaign against cervical cancer to  actually spare the girl children within the age of nine and 10 years of cervical cancer scourge in the future.He said statistics have shown that 24 women are lost every day to cervical cancer.