Tobineri Mind Foundation, in collaboration with Glittow Hope Foundation, have called on the incoming president to prioritise healthcare delivery for vulnerable persons.
Ms Oluwatobi Abodunrin, Convener of the foundation, made the call at the opening of a mini sickbay at the Sharing Prosperity School New Kuchigoro Internally Displaced persons (IDPs) camp in Abuja as part of activities to mark the children’s day.
According to Abodunrin, the health sector needs to be boosted and measures put in place to have funds to care for vulnerable persons.
This, she said, was because the sector was not really doing well in terms of equipment and drugs and there are people who can not afford treatment or take care of themselves.
She said there were challenges limiting access to healthcare delivery like financial constraints among others and called on the government to intervene.
She said that due to lack of payment of hospital bills, most patients were stopped from leaving the hospital until they paid their bills and there was need for government’s intervention.
“The hospitals delay people to stay until they finish paying their fees they won’t be allowed to go,so they have to start looking for funds from outsiders, it is not nice at all.
“Like the IDPs, when they are sick, if they get to the hospital who is going to fund their bills?
Sometimes ,there are money allocated for this purpose but they don’t get to access them.
”So please allow the money to flow, government should send somebody to the hospitals to checkmate where the money is going to.
“Some of the IDPs don’t have fathers and mothers anymore ,and they are not working, no means of feeding,so please the incoming government should help us because the health sector is very important.”
Abodunrin said that she decided to establish the mini sickbay to contribute her quota to the health sector and help in ameliorating the plight of IDPs, especially children.
This, she said, was influenced by the spate of suffering of the IDPs and lack of access to quality healthcare, especially for children.
She said that the sickbay, established with the support of the children, would go a long way to serve them and give them better health to be able to study in school and be more productive.
Mr Bishara Tanko, a member of the team, said that the plight of the IDPs called for deliberate action, especially in the health sector.
Tanko said there was need for the government to do better in caring for those children and not to be neglected to grow as thugs or hoodlums to cause social vices in the future.
“The children here are our kids and some of them are growing without proper upbringing.
“So providing the sickbay is the little we can do and we have actually tried and kept something and I think this will definitely help the children.
“If single individual, young men like us have been able to do this, the government should do better.
Tanko therefore called on the government and other well meaning Nigerians to please visit this place from time to time and help out.
A staff member of the school, Yakubu Ibrahim, thanked the foundation for the gesture.
Ibrahim said that the sickbay was very important to them, adding that they would put it to good use.
“The sickbay will benefit the IDP camp and the children.
”Mini sickbay is very important to us because as you can see, we do not really have a clinic here.
”So honestly we are very happy to see this people come here to help us.”
Ibrahim also called on other well meaning Nigerians to replicate such gestures in the camp.
“We are still calling the other people to come and help us to do this kind of things because we don’t have a medical centre here.
“Sometimes when we fall sick, we don’t have a place to go for treatment but since we have this kind of place now, we can visit to get drugs.“
