* Conducts free blood pressure, blood sugar, infection, vision, and dental screening
* Early diagnosis makes treatment easier – founder
A not-for-profit organisation, Amal Outreach, has offered free medical screening to Lagos residents in continuation of its monthly healthcare programme.
For July 2024, additional services such as eye examinations, vision screening, dental screening and treatment were included and conducted at Iyewo Clinic.
The outreach which was held at various areas in Lagos Island, granted underserved members of the community access to medical screening that included blood pressure, blood sugar, HIV, hepatitis, tuberculosis, prostate, and H.pylori.
The Executive Director of Amal Outreach, a Nigerian US-based physician, Dr. Jalilah Folake Kofo-Idowu, said early screening makes diagnosis timely, thereby preventing the medical condition of patients from becoming complicated.
Muslim News gathered that patients in their hundreds were assigned numbers as they arrived the clinic to ensure better coordination and orderliness.
For dental screening, a dental support team was on ground at the clinic to undertake cleaning, scaling and polishing for patients who required such. The team was made up of students of Lagos State University Dental School. There were about 6 stations for dental services in the free screening exercise.
Two optometrists were also available to take vision screening and eye examinations for the patients.
The Executive Director said there is a huge gap that needs to be filled in healthcare for the people.
“Our non-profit, Amal Outreach, focuses on helping underserved communities or marginalised communities access quality healthcare and the sister organisation, Iyewo, provides primary care to people in the market, at home and through telemedicine,” she said.
“So, we are trying to just marry these two to serve people, because they need primary care. People need to stay healthy even though the economy is hard. Imagine being sick, having to spend your hard-earned money on illness amid scarcity. People need to stay healthy and that’s what we are doing.
“Screening people early helps us to diagnose these diseases and treat them early so that people do not spend large sums of money when they are critically ill much later. We can treat something when it’s still mild for a smaller amount of money.”
The Iyewo CEO said there is a rise in the statistics of people with kidney and heart diseases, underlining the need for regular blood pressure screening. She said their aim at Amal Outreach is to help people with early detection so that they do not get overstretched when the disease becomes worse.
“So, there’s a rising burden of non-communicable diseases globally and Nigeria having the gap that it has in healthcare provision, with a lot of people having kidney failure, heart failure, stroke and other complications resulting from uncontrolled blood pressure and diabetes.
“We have about 30% of our population with hypertension, about 5% with diabetes and many of them aren’t being treated. What would end up happening is that in the next 10 to 20 years, you’d see a lot of people with heart disease and other ailments.
“I mean, we’ve seen a lot of people crowdfunding for things like kidney transplants, maintaining kidney failure, being on very expensive dialysis. In a week, people are spending N100,000 or more on dialysis to be able to stay alive. Imagine what the cumulative effect of that is. But if we can prevent it early enough, diagnose them early, and give them medications that keeps these things under control, it’d prevent organ damage. So that’s why we’re doing what we’re doing.”
Also speaking, a medical officer at Iyewo, Dr. Ajibola Oluwatobiloba, joined the Executive Director to preach regular screening, saying it is good for everyone to be up-to-date about their health status.
She also expressed satisfaction at the attendance, noting people turned out in their numbers showing they are looking out for themselves.
One of the volunteers for the outreach, Adebowale Tomiwa, said she served in the dental department and saw a lot of people who didn’t know they had decay in their mouths and fractured teeth.
Gafar Olamilekan Olansile, who led the dental student team, commended the initiative, saying they have treated people with varying cases.
He said people need to take their oral hygiene seriously because the mouth serves a gateway to all forms of systemic diseases.
“Mouth serves as a gateway to all forms of systemic diseases in the body, and most of these dental problems can be prevented if they can be easily discovered and treated at the initial stage. We can prevent it from becoming something complex that can affect other parts of the body.
“This is a very good programme, and I can tell you that we have treated so many cases, including someone who lost four teeth. We also discovered that the techniques many people use to brush are very bad which is causing gingival recession, a situation where tooth gum is receding, and poor oral health. While brushing, let your wrist do the work, not your elbow, and brush gently in a rotative movement.
“There are many techniques of brushing teeth but the one we recommend is to divide the teeth into 4 parts, brushing each part for 30 seconds, that’s 2 minutes in all, which is the normal time to brush.”
The student team lead encouraged the use of soft texture toothbrushes for children and adults.
“Both adults and children should avoid hard toothbrushes. They should also use fluoride toothpaste, regardless of the product,” he added.
Beneficiaries of the free medical screening programme were excited and full of gratitude to Amal Outreach.
For many of the beneficiaries, it was their first opportunity to access dental screening and other tests.
They thanked the organisers and volunteers for their show of care, confirming they were rightly advised on their health conditions.
