Pastor Victoria Onu, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Grace Nursing Care Centre (GNCC), on Monday called on governments at all levels to situate geriatrics centres in the country’s 774 local governments areas.
Onu, also Secretary General, Coalition of Societies for the Rights of Older Persons in Nigeria (COSROPIN), said this in an interview in Abuja.
She said that the centres would help in giving older persons’ access to quality healthcare, especially in the rural areas.
“Geriatrics centres are very essential in all the local governments of the country because it would offer older people in remote areas access to quality healthcare.
“Many older persons are dying as a result of lack of medical care, and they are many at the local governments or community levels,” she said.
The GNCC Chief expressed her commitment to the welfare and wellbeing of older persons who she said deserve better medical attention.
Onu said that thousands of older people have lost their lives to avoidable deaths due lack of timely and adequate medical care.
According to her, every primary health centre in every local government, community, and villages ought to have a geriatrics unit for older people.
Onu, however, urged government to reinforce its pledges of commitment to older persons by creating geriatric centres in rural areas.
Geriatrics is the branch of medicine concerned with the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of disease in older people and the problems specific to aging.
