By DADA AYOKHAI
The Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) may face challenges with its ongoing medical outreach, as beneficiaries have labelled the initiative a political ploy rather than Federal government genuine efforts aimed at providing affordable health services to the grassroots.
The free medical programme currently underway in Edo State, taking place in Auchi in the Edo North senatorial district, has been plagued by numerous complaints from the target group in health care delivery.
Investigations conducted by Borderline News 24 revealed that the free medical outreach may have encountered significant challenges from the first day of the programme with visibly nothing on ground but with few officials from crowd control team.
Some of the recipients expressed disappointment after spending a significant amount of money and time to attend the event on Sunday, May 12 which is meant to be the first day of the programme with nobody on ground to attend to them.
Accordingly to them , they abandoned churches and other social activities, only to be let down by the absence of the officials.
He said the experience was a blow and also expressed concerns about the financial implications of making a return visi to his aode.
The programme eventually kicked off on Monday when the medical team finally arrived on the scene to start the event .
The officials complained of tiredness having traveled from Warri in Delta state to Edo on the Sunday where the free medical outreach was supposed to take off.
Remi, a patient from Ososo in the Akoko Edo council area, complained bitterly that the NDDC medical team only brought everyday drugs such as analgesic and painkillers, which he noted are over-the-counter drugs used in alleviating the pains if the sufferer does not have the money to procure the required specialized drugs.
Omokhude, another patient suffering from an eye-related problems, said she was given a common optometry drugs as against her chronic cataract and glaucoma diagnosed cases.
She said when she when complained, she was told that the programme is an outreach and not specialized medical cases.
The recipients of the free medical outreach, some of whom travelled from distant locations to receive medical services, felt that the medication they received did not align with their medical needs. They believe that the medical outreach is a scam.
The host medical doctors at the Edo State University Teaching Hospital in Auchi, expressed disappointed at not be properly corroborated with the Short notice of the event.
As a result, they were unable to provide backup support with local government medical doctors, health educators and effective grassroots to the NDDC-engaged doctors.
