Salman Hospital, Jos, Plateau State, has offered free medical and surgical services to hundreds of residents of Jos North and LGAs of Plateau.
The medical outreach is an annual event by the hospital to assist the less privileged in the said areas.
The beneficiaries who trooped to the hospital in their numbers were offered medical services including myomectomy, ovarian cystectomy, cataract extraction and VVF repair.
Dr Longwap Abdulazis Saleh, Managing Director (MD) of the hospital, said the hospital embarked on the project considering how thousands of people, especially the less privileged, found it difficult to get access to health services, adding that to reduce the suffering of the common man, they deemed it fit to carry out the exercise.
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He said, “This is the eighth time we ask sick people to come to the hospital to receive medical services of different ailments. We do invite doctors from different teaching and other hospitals across the country to consult patients for two to three days after which surgical cases would be sorted out. The remaining days of the week are for carrying out the surgeries, except for orthopaedic surgery.
“The aim of the exercise is to give the less privileged individuals access to healthcare services. It is no longer news that people are finding it difficult to pay for their medical bills and to ensure that everyone is carried along. We came out with this initiative to assist them. “
Dr Surayya Auwal Suleiman, who works with National Hospital, Abuja, who participated in the one-week outreach, noted that a lot of people lived with different forms of diseases for long without going to the hospital. She said, “From my experience during the exercise, people tend to stay with medical or even surgical conditions for years rather than accessing hospital early in order to prevent complications. A few of the ones we did here came as emergencies.
“It is heartbreaking. This outreach helps the community to know their health status to take action. I call on other well-to-do individuals and the elite to engage in this kind of programme so as to assist the common man.”
