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1800 persons benefit from Classic FM, Pathcare’s free medical outreach

By Ijeoma Opara
09 August 2015   |   11:00 pm
OVER 1800 residents of Yaba community recently benefitted from the ‘Doctors on air’ free medical mission organised by Classic FM in partnership with Pathcare Medicals as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The event, which had numerous volunteer doctors covering different specialties, including dermatologists, oncologists (cervical, breast and prostrate cancers), eye, dental, blood checks…

Protest Doctors USE CopyOVER 1800 residents of Yaba community recently benefitted from the ‘Doctors on air’ free medical mission organised by Classic FM in partnership with Pathcare Medicals as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).

The event, which had numerous volunteer doctors covering different specialties, including dermatologists, oncologists (cervical, breast and prostrate cancers), eye, dental, blood checks and pharmacy, was held at the Yaba Local Council secretariat, Lagos.

The General Manager, Classic FM, Mr. Deji Awokoya said that the yearly event, which was in its third edition, was borne out of the need to help callers of ‘Doctors on air’ programme meet with medical specialists, who get to attend to them.

“Based on the feedbacks we get from callers, a lot of them wanted sessions with the doctors and so we thought that we should do a mission where people would talk about their ailments to doctors because it could be difficult relating with people on the telephone.”

He also noted that contributing to the community gave them fulfillment.

“The turnout is great, the goodwill we get from people is also good and so we will just carry on as long as we can. The fact that we are contributing to the society is what we care about and hopefully, the government can see what we are doing and do a little bit more because you can see clearly that people need medical attention.”

According to the Sales Director Megalectrics – operators of Classic/Naija FM, Mrs. Amira Obi-Okoye, “we are bringing medical services to those who need it. We all know it is very difficult for a people to access health care and statistics say that about 70 percent of the population don’t have access to basic health. As we progress, we are having more turnouts by the year and it tells us that people are responsive.”

While the host of ‘Doctors on air’, Dr. Pamela Ajayi said that event, which was a follow-up to the radio programme, was to educate people on health matters, especially preventive care, “people need to be empowered to know their bodies and tell when it needs medical attention. Nigeria has one of the lowest life expectancies, which should not be and it is largely due to stress, Western diets, including poverty, which makes us very susceptible to different health issues.”

One of the facilitators and Managing Director Bricon Global Consult, Abigail Simon Hart noted that early detection of health issues was key. “The biggest challenge we have in Nigeria is that people always come very late, nobody likes to talk about cancer in Nigeria, it is a stigma, I was diagnosed with cancer last year and when people say I don’t look like I had it, I reply that it was detected early,” she added.

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