The National Youth Service Corps and International Federation on Ageing-Nigeria have concluded arrangements to boost the delivery of health services and humanitarian response to rural dwellers through mobile hospitals/clinics.
At the Integrated National Mobile/Field Hospital Initiative for Humanitarian Intervention and Social Response Project/Partnership Outreach Meeting held on Friday in Abuja, both Organisations noted that the intervention would help in improving the lives of people at the grassroots and in achieving Universal Health Coverage in the country.
National Coordinator IFAN, Ike Willie-Nwobu who noted that the journey started in January 1999, said the national programme was aimed at utilising extensively the massive human capital deposit with the NYSC, in delivering health services in the most cost-effective and efficient way.
He said, “It will be a 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 NYSC-IFAN mobile healthcare initiative will help to optimise/maximise our huge extensive diasporas, harness the skill/wisdom of senior medical/healthcare professionals through inter-generational relationship with the youth, and promote the culture of volunteerism, community development and corporate social responsibility in our national health care delivery- a major culture/system of developing and enhancing national resilence.â€
NYSC Director, Community Development Service and Special Projects Abdulrazaq Salawu, 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.
Earlier, Dick-Iruenabene Uforma, a director at the NYSC, maintained that over the years, the Corps has proven to be a veritable vehicle for socio-economic mobilization and an enduring catalyst that has continued to help develop every segment of national life.