Their challenges are huge: no road, no water, no health facility, but for a moment, residents of Kuchinda, a farming community in the nation’s capital, relish a health outreach, OLUGBENGA ADANIKIN reports
Kuchinda’s lack is well known. In fact, residents have since come to terms with the fact that they have little to be happy about. They are located in Karu Local Government Area of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), but that brings little comfort. It is occupied by farmers, and petty traders with little or no access to basic amenities such as primary health care, safe drinking water and good roads.
The quest to meet these demands unfortunately has yielded no result.
But to salvage the situation, especially in the area of health care, LiveBridge Foundation took free health care service to the people. The gesture, according to the organisers of the outreach, was to extend humanitarian assistance to those in need.
Kuchinda is one among many rural communities in Abuja which lack access to health care. Though, Abuja is the seat of power where decisions regarding affairs of the country are taken but lots of the residents in rural communities still remain marginalised.
“I’m happy for what is happening here today as LiveBridge has brought nurses and doctors earlier to treat our women on cervical cancer. Today they have given us a borehole and free medical treatment, the challenge that is confronting us is lack of primary healthcare service, schools and durable roads,” said Kuchinda’s traditional ruler, Chief Ishaku Anyiwoyi.
The LiveBridge medical team visited the community in large numbers with qualified nurses and doctors. They conducted various tests on the indigenes that came out in their hundreds.
The community also benefited from free drugs such as anti-malaria, pain killers, syrups, vitamin C, among others. These were all distributed to the community aside from interpersonal medical counseling from the experts.
Founder of LiveBridge Foundation, Vicky Alice, said the gesture was part of primary mandates of the non-governmental organisation (NGO). She described access to basic medical care as the right of every citizen irrespective of the social status.
“In LiveBridge we handle healthcare, education and empowerment programme but healthcare service is what we are doing today, we have done similar medical outreaches in Niger, Nassarawa, and here in Abuja, we are looking at treating 1000 of the villagers today we were here in June and had identified potable water has their basic and urgent need that’s why we drilled a borehole for them and it will be commissioned today,” she said.
According to her, some individuals in the community were suffering from various categories of ailments which could include HIV/Aids but refused to partake in the test.
She expressed concerns on apathy of the community towards the adoption of family planning methods to reduce the risk of pregnancy.
Alice said, “There is need to sensitise the communities about the HIV virus and the use of family planning for benefit of the uneducated and poor households.
“We identified HIV positive patients here and other diseases that need surgery but they are afraid of doing the HIV test so we will talk to their chief to help sensitise them on the need to be tested,” she said.
Anyiwoyi was happy that Kuchinda now has a borehole, and that LiveBridge also came calling.