The Accord Senatorial Candidate for Oyo South district, Mr. Kolapo Kola-Daisi, has promised to make residents’ health and education his top priorities when elected.
He made the disclosure on Friday in Ibadan at the closing of his three-day free medical outreach progamme for Oyo South residents in Ibadan.
Our correspondent reports that no fewer than 10,000 residents have benefitted from the three-day free medical outreach sponsored by Kola-Daisi in partnership with the Medical Aid for Africa and Access to Basic Healthcare (ABC) Foundation.
No fewer than six visiting physicians with specialties in cardiology to general medicine and dentistry handled the outreach with support from 14 volunteering Doctors from the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan.
The beneficiaries were screened for hypertension, diabetes, eye and dental, while majority went home with various free medical supplies.
Kola-Daisi said that the success of any government could be measured by how seriously it treated health and education sectors.
He said that the outreach was one of his ‘Jeka Dasi’ projects for the people of his Senatorial District and would be sustained as an annual programme.
The senatorial candidate said that a healthy crop of constituents should be one of the goals facilitated as a true representative of the people.
Kola-Daisi said that the timing for the outreach was good given the stress many had experienced as a result of nationwide cash and fuel frustrations.
“We want to help thousands of people with their health issues. This exercise would be ongoing and would be repeated every year when elected into office.
“To keep it running, we will build an even better, more sustainable infrastructure around it.
“We’re even thinking about bringing medical outreach to people in their communities so they don’t have to travel far to get healthcare and treatments.Our people need to be healthy,” he said.
He said that the outreach would be part of their mandate when they get to office, saying it was a necessary intervention.
Dr. Sabu Geoge, team leader from Medical Aid for Africa and one of the six foreign Doctors, said that have been able to raise awareness on hypertension during the three-day medical outreach.
He said that those screened for hypertension were taught on the importance of taking recommended medicines on a regular basis.
“One of the biggest challenges we have seen is that people believe hypertension is a disease someone can treat a little bit of time because it doesn’t have specific symptoms.
“Many people stop taking the medication because they believe it has cured them.
Once diagnosed, people must understand that they have the silent killer disease.
“They must strictly adhere to the medication, and they must be aware that the medication is not expensive and can be obtained locally,” he said.
Chief Sunday Babalola, Director-General of the Kolapo Kola-Daisi campaign group, stated in his remarks that the outreach served as a reminder of one of the candidate’s free health care programmes for women and children in the constituency.
Some of the beneficiaries lauded the efforts of the candidate in promoting healthy living of residents.
They pledged to vote for the candidate in the Feb. 25 general elections, expressing confidence in his ability to deliver democratic dividends across the district.