Your ever forward-looking Keep Up The Hope (KUTH) Foundation has taken its benevolence out of Lagos for the first time, showering free health-care services and sundry humanitarian donations on an Edo state community.
For five days (May 16 through 20, 2013), Irekpai village and two adjoining nativities in the Uzariue clan of the larger Auchi Kingdom, saw a team of 12 medical personnel hired by KUTH, run totally free clinics for everybody who attended.
The medical team of four qualified doctors, four registered nurses, four paramedics (a lab technician, a physiotherapist, and auxiliary nurses) was led by Dr. Abayomi Durojaiye of CECY Health Consult.
KUTH records show that the cost of consulting the medics, charges for drugs and other medicaments including 200 units of tent-sized treated mosquito nets, feeding patients for two days during the exercise, comes near N5.8m, not counting other logistics like administrative charges, quartering the team in hotels in Auchi, transportation and movement of facilities (to and from Lagos), et cetera.
Dr. Durojaiye's own records from the project, tagged 'KUTH Foundation Free Community Health Service,' indicate that no less than 1,430 children and adults were tested, diagnosed and treated for various ailments and general health worries during the period.
However, KUTH Foundation statistics, computed using the feeding roster for the first and final days as well as dispensation of medicaments at the project, showed that no less than 2,617 persons were at the clinics while the program lasted.
These included scanning for expectant mothers, dialyzers for asthma patients, special provision for ring-worm treatment, physiotherapy, and prevalent malaria/typhoid fever, among other sundry health-related complaints.
According to KUTH programme director Francis Chilaka, three very critical cases which Dr. Durojaiye said could not be handled at the Irekpai project, despite availability of a fully-fitted medical laboratory as part of the program's synergy, were later recommended to KUTH Foundation for further medicare in specialist hospitals.
The KUTH Free Community Health Service clinics were conducted daily within the palace grounds of the ruler of Irekpai, 96-year-old Chief Igiebor Tsedi Egwa, whose palace secretary Alhaji Ibrahim Adamu personally monitored the programme throughout its duration.
It turns out that Irekpai is the home village of KUTH Foundation's principal promoter Mr. Gerald Agbonoarue Azonobo, although he was born and bred in Lagos where KUTH had thus far concentrated its charitable activities since its founding nearly two years ago.
Mr. Azonobo, humble as ever, therefore took opportunity of the programme to pay homage to the Irekpai chief-in-council, as well as the Otaru Auchi-in-council where he was received personally by HRH Alhaji A.H. Momoh, Ikelebe III (Otaru of Auchi).
In both palaces, the KUTH promoter who travelled to the event with a retinue of about 30 of his top associates, business partners, and co-promoters of the foundation, told the people of the numerous humanitarian projects which the foundation had undertaken back in Lagos of which most Lagosians are very familiar with.
The immediate dream of the foundation, the promoter stated, is to reach to the entire Auchi Kingdom area with activities of the foundation beginning with the second phase of the rural project which targets to start early in the second half of 2013.
Later, Mr. Chilaka confirmed that the Catholic Church, Anglican Church, Winners' Chapel, Bible Life Centre, the Central Mosque, and the Ahmaddiya Mosque all in Irekpai, received cash donations of N50,000 each to enable them acquire electricity-power generators for those establishments.
Also, each of the Youth, Women, and Men groups in the village and the chief-in-council received similar sums, respectively, in aid of the groups' activities for advancement of the ordinary people of the village.
Additionally, Obele Primary School, the community sitting across the road from the Azonobo family compound in Irekpai, is to be completely reconstructed. Principal promoter Mr. Gerald Azonobo made the pledge after visiting the dilapidated premises during his 'tour of duty' to the foundation's Free Community Health Service project.
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KUTH Foundation
Communications Team