President Muhammadu Buhari’s vision of taking 10 million Nigerians out poverty every year for the next ten years is on course and would be actualized by the quantum leap in human capacity development attainments, especially healthcare, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, has said.
Osinbajo said this on Monday at the flag-off of the nationwide Integrated Medical Outreach Programme (I-MOP) at the Bwari Area Council Primary Healthcare Centre.
“The President has repeatedly asserted that his vision of taking ten million Nigerians out of poverty every year for the next ten years depends so clearly on the quantum leap that we must make in our human capacity development attainments especially healthcare. This is why this integrated Medical Outreach Programme is a crucial feature of our overall human capacity development effort,” he said.
Speaking on the significance of the programmes on the population in the rural parts of the country, the Vice President said: “Despite our best efforts, there is a significant gap in bringing public health services to vulnerable populations especially in the rural, mountainous, riverine, peri-urban and other difficult to reach areas in the country.
“This attempt to take basic healthcare services, health education, basic surgeries and screening for diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, tuberculosis, HIV – AIDS and cancer to these under-served and difficult to reach areas is an eminently sensible and practical plan.
“Not only does it provide free health services to communities that had never in the past enjoyed these sorts of services, but it also provides our public health institutions with invaluable disease identification opportunities and outreach lessons.
“Here in Bwari, we will flag-off the conduct of the first round of the Integrated Medical Outreach Programme (I-MOP) for the unreached, under-served and vulnerable communities in 409 selected LGAs in the 36 states of the federation, including the Federal Capital Territory.
“The I-MOP intervention is aimed at strengthening and scaling up access to routine immunization and other primary healthcare (PHC) services in selected low performing LGAs.”
On the efforts made by the Buhari-led administration in containing some vaccine-preventable diseases, the Vice President said “in a few months Nigeria and indeed the African continent will be formally declared polio-free by the World Health Organisation (WHO).”
“Our routine immunization programme has also improved from 33% in 2016 to 50% as measured in the 2018 National Demographic Health survey.
“The federal government of Nigeria maintains a policy to provide immunization services free to all against all vaccine-preventable diseases (VPDs),” he said.
