In the spirit of love and giving back to the society, Everest Helping Minds Foundation has conducted a free medical and empowerment outreach at Guidna community, Kaba district in Abuja.
Through the outreach, members of Everest Helping Minds Foundation offered free medical check-ups, family planning consultations and distributed food items to members of the community.
Over 200 women benefited from the outreach directly.
Speaking at the event, Emem Everest, Founder, Everest Helping Minds Foundation, disclosed that prior to their recent visit, the Foundation had carried out due diligence in the community and identified that despite the availability of a host of basic amenities such as light and water, the community was lacking in healthcare provision, which is a necessity in every community.
“The initial plan was to celebrate Valentine’s Day here at the community. But during our first visit, we realised that the people here needed urgent medical attention, because there is no healthcare centre in the community and especially since the closest health center is miles away,” she revealed.
This view was corroborated by the Youth Leader, Guidna Village, Dantani Jeto, who stressed that the major challenge facing the community was the lack of a health center.
He noted that the people in the community have to be taken to Kubwa for treatment whenever there was need for medical attention.
Adding that, “especially at night, it becomes very challenging because transportation becomes an issue. So this visitation from Everest Helping Minds Foundation is timely and well appreciated.”
According to Emem, a clinic will be built in the community to ensure the people of Guidna have access to basic healthcare.
“With the amount of women with health issues, mostly cancer, we plan to seek medical attention for them,” she said. “For Guidna community and others like it, we plan to build health centers for easier access to medical care,” he said.
She also revealed that in the near future, the Foundation intends to activate an empowerment plan which will support women financially by giving them business grants and loans.
Chief of Guidna Village, Umar Danladi Guidna, who welcomed the delegation from the Foundation at his palace, expressed his gratitude to the Foundation for their humanitarian efforts in the community.
An enthused Blessing Luka, a beneficiary of the free medical and empowerment outreach, also expressed her happiness with the exercise.
“Honestly I’m so happy with the visitation of this foundation. There was an outreach here last week but the crowd was too much so I couldn’t check my blood pressure. But today I was able to run some medical check ups. I appreciate this group, they were organised and things were in order.
“It will be good if more visitations like this happen often because majority of the women here are not that educated. For most of them it’s only in these outreaches they have access to healthcare. If you tell them to go to the hospital they find it difficult.
“Especially checking of BP, most women collapse often because they don’t get to check their BP, but interventions like this, makes it easy for the people to run health checks and address issues concerning their health,” she said.
Through their outreach in Guidna, Everest Helping Minds Foundation made a bold statement that healthcare is a right not a luxury, which is in line with the vision of the foundation to raise the standard of living in communities and productivity among people in communities especially the underprivileged.