11th July, 2018
The Cross River Government has introduced the Ayade Home Care to provide rural people with affordable and quality medical services in the state.
Dr Genevieve Ephraim, the Director-General of Ayade Home Care, made this known in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Wednesday in Calabar.
Ephraim said that the programme was the governor’s initiative to bring healthcare delivery to the doorstep of rural dwellers.
She explained that under the programme patients would not have to go far in search of medical services, beginning with a medical outreach in Calabar South Local Government Area of the state.
“The people would come to register at our outreach post, get medical services and drop their addresses for us to subsequently follow up,” she said.
She further explained that many people in need of medical care face challenges due to the fact their communities are hard to reach.
“We have actually had to situate people in some of the locations so they can get information from the people and send to us, so, we can respond.
“There may be few challenges but the people really love the programme because we are bringing the doctors and nurses to their homes, they don’t have to go and look for them.
“As we continue the programme, we hope to get to a point when it won’t matter what the diagnosis is, we would provide medical services as well as surgeries for just a N1,000 per month,” she said.
The director-general said the governor’s initiative in the state was replica of what obtained in the western world to make healthcare affordable.
Similarly, the President, Medical Women Association, Cross River Chapter, Dr Jacinta Okoi-Obuli, said her association was collaborating with the Ayade Home Care Services to organise an outreach in the state.
Okoi-Obuli said the association would reach out to people and let them know that they could access healthcare at the outreaches that would take place in the various local government areas.
he said funding had been a major challenge in providing effective medical care for the people, stressing that the government’s efforts be complemented was trying, it can’t do it alone.
“Funding had been a challenge, though, we are not here for the money, if we can get more people to donate more drugs and facilities that we can use to reach out to the people, it would be a great help.
“Another challenge is lack of awareness, quite a number of people don’t know about this programme, that is why we are using the public address system to call them out,” she said.
The president urged the people especially women to access the Well Woman Clinic in Calabar that caters to their health needs.
According to her, a doctor and a nurse are stationed at the clinic every workday from 10 a.m to 2 p.m to render medical services to beneficiaries.
She stressed the need for people to visit the Well Woman Clinic to carry out all forms of cancer test for early detection of the disease, saying cancer is now prevalent in the society.