…calls for more establishment of efficient, sustainable healthcare facilities

By Gabriel Ewepu

ABUJA – AS access to quality healthcare remains a huge challenge to Nigerians, the Resident Pastor, Elevation Church Abuja, Pastor Bowale Ikotun, weekend, called on the government to deliver quality healthcare services to Nigerians.

Speaking at a free medical outreach, organised by the Elevation Church Abuja and PISTIS Foundation, known as UBOMI Project Abuja, which took place at Jabi Lake Park, Abuja, Ikotun said the government also needs to establish more primary healthcare centres to strengthen its policies in various communities in order to address emergencies and safeguard the health of the people.

According to him, the essence of the free medical outreach, is to meet the needs of the community and help residents acquire free medical services.

He said: “We all know what is going on currently in Nigeria, where the cost of even Primary Health Care has gone up out of the reach of the common man, and so as a church, God has put in our hearts to be a blessing to our community.

“So one of the ways in which we are a blessing to the community is to organize doctors, nurses within us and friends amongst us to come and do free medical consultation, most importantly in the primary health care area of health.”

However, the clergy said government alone cannot render such services but also faith based organisations should try and organise outreaches that add value to the lives of the people as part of the contribution to serve humanity and relief the government of the burden to provide such services.

“The truth of the matter is that the government cannot do it alone, and that is why, we as a church, we are coming up to assist the Government in whatever way we can.

“So I encourage a lot of other religious organizations to be part and parcel of this”, he added.

Meanwhile, the Head of partnership for the UBOMI Project Abuja, Davidson Amedu, in a remark explained that the Elevation Church Abuja is expressing the love of God through the UBOMI Project to organize the outreach in the community.

“We are partnering with Pistis Foundation, which is a registered organization under the Elevation Church to enable the Church help people with medical solutions.

“We understand the health situation of the country. Not everybody right now can afford medical supplies. In fact, there is also a short supply of medical experts in the country right now, and the few that are available, very scarce, to even the average middle class person, talk more of the underserved and the underprivileged.

“So we decided to bridge the gap to create such a project that intervenes, that steps in to give medical solutions, ranging from diagnosis to counseling to consultation to medical and pharmaceutical supplies itself, all for free. Nobody is paying a dime here.

“This is our way of saying God loves you, God wants you to be well. Not everybody’s level is fit to the point where they can do without medicine, and saying I trust God for healing or divine health.

“We pray for people, we administer healing, but we still believe that medicine has its role, place and position in humans life so we are able to help people move from wherever they are medically to a more balanced and more healthy disposition.

“The Elevation Church has its headquarters in Lagos, and we’ve donbe series of UBOMI Project editions, where we cater for 1000s of people.

“In Lagos, we even do surgeries, we do major operations, but this is the first we are doing in Abuja, and it is not going to be the last, obviously, because we have seen that there is a gap.

“There is a huge gap in even accessing medical supplies and medical solutions are even more expensive in abuja. So we want to be able to, deliver some of these solutions to people for free.

“Look out for more editions of this project across the Country and in other parts of Africa, we will do much more to the glory of God.”

Also, the Executive Director, Pistis Foundation, Leanord F-Thomas, said that Ubomi Project is taking a hospital to a community, with medical experts, from different parts of the country and volunteers to serve for a certain period.

F-Thomas further stated that the UBOMI medical outreach is structured to work with social and governmental organisations to provide data of advocacy, preventive healthcare risk.

He further express that the data gathered enables them to know the highest cases of illness in the community and ways to prefer solutions to those cases.

“So those data are gathered, it helps us to know, for example, you know, how many cases of malaria in a certain community, how many cases of diabetes are in a certain community? Not only do we treat the cases during the outreach, we’re able to profile solutions.

So we are here to support whatever it is that the government has established to address the ills in society”, he said.