Health

Medical Outreach: Prioritise Primary Health Care policies-Pastor Ikotun Urges Government

Published

7 months ago

May 11, 2025

Joel Ajayi

Resident Pastor of the Elevation Church Abuja, Pastor Bowale Ikotun, has urged the government to establish more primary health care centre to strengthen its policies in various communities, to be able to attend to health emergencies in the community.

He made this call on Saturday during a free medical outreach, organised by the Elevation Church Abuja and PISTIS Foundation, known as UBOMI Project Abuja, which took place at Jabi Lake Park Abuja.

Pastor Ikotu, said that the purpose of organising the outreach is to meet the needs of the community and help residents acquire free medical services.

“We all know what is going on currently in Nigeria, where the cost of even Primary Health Care has gone up out of the reach of the common man, and so as a church, God has put in our hearts to be a blessing to our community”.

“So one of the ways in which we are a blessing to the community is to organize doctors, nurses within us and friends amongst us to come and do free medical consultation, most importantly in the primary health care area of health.”

He further urged other religious organisations, non governmental organisations to try to organise outreach that adds to the wellbeing of individuals in the community in order to support the government.

“The truth of the matter is that the government cannot do it alone, and that is why, we as a church, we are coming up to assist the Government in whatever way we can “.”So I encourage a lot of other religious organizations to be part and parcel of this”.

Head of partnership for the UBOMI Project Abuja Mr Davidson Amedu, said the Elevation Church Abuja is expressing the love of God through the UBOMI Project.

“We are partnering with Pistis Foundation, which is a registered organization under the Elevation Church to enable tye Church help people with medical solutions.

“We understand the health situation of the country. Not everybody right now can afford medical supplies. In fact, there is also a short supply of medical experts in the country right now, and the few that are available, very scarce, to even the average middle class person, talk more of the underserved and the underprivileged.”

“So we decided to bridge the gap to create such a project that intervenes, that steps in to give medical solutions, ranging from diagnosis to counseling to consultation to medical and pharmaceutical supplies itself, all for free. Nobody is paying a dime here”.

“This is our way of saying God loves you, God wants you to be well. Not everybody’s level is fit to the point where they can do without medicine, and saying I trust God for healing or divine health”.

“We pray for people, we administer healing, but we still believe that medicine has its role, place and position in humans life so we are able to help people move from wherever they are medically to a more balanced and more healthy disposition.”
He also expressed that this is the first edition of UBOMI Project in Abuja but it’s going to have other edition to come in the near future.

“The Elevation Church has its headquarters in Lagos, and we’ve donbe series of UBOMI Project editions, where we cater for 1000s of people.”
” In Lagos, we even do surgeries, we do major operations, but this is the first we are doing in Abuja, and it is not going to be the last, obviously, because we have seen that there is a gap.”

“There is a huge gap in even accessing medical supplies and medical solutions are even more expensive in abuja. So we want to be able to, deliver some of these solutions to people for free.”
“look out for more editions of this project across the Country and in other parts of Africa, we will do much more to the glory of God” he added.

Executive Director, Pistis Foundation, Mr Leanord F-Thomas, said that Ubomi Project is taking a hospital to a community, with medical experts, from different parts of the country and volunteers to serve for a certain period.

He said the UBOMI medical outreach is structured to work with social and governmental organisations to provide data of advocacy, preventive healthcare risk.

He further express that the data gathered enables them to know the highest cases of illness in the community and ways to prefer solutions to those cases.

“So those data are gathered, it helps us to know, for example, you know, how many cases of malaria in a certain community, how many cases of diabetes are in a certain community? Not only do we treat the cases during the outreach, we’re able to profile solutions”.

“So we are here to support whatever it is that the government has established to address the ills in society.”

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Health

Stakeholders Applaud A360 Impact On Adolescent Health

Published

2 days ago

November 28, 2025

The Gleamer

Stakeholders in Nigeria’s health and development sector say the institutionalisation and scale-up of the Adolescent 360 (A360) Amplify project have greatly improved adolescent sexual and reproductive health outcomes in participating states.

They made this known at a dissemination meeting on the project on Thursday in Abuja.

It was implemented by the Society for Family Health (SFH) and partners, and later adopted into government systems following documented successes.

Launched in 2020, the A360 project was designed to provide adolescent girls with access to sexual and reproductive health information, youth-friendly services and economic empowerment opportunities.

The programme was implemented in Kano, Jigawa, Kaduna and Nasarawa States using a human-centred design approach that engaged governments, communities and young people to improve uptake of family planning and maternal health services.

Dr Aisha Sadiq, Permanent Secretary, Kaduna State Ministry of Health, said institutionalising A360 had delivered measurable improvements in adolescent health indicators and community wellbeing.

She said Kaduna currently provides A360 youth-friendly services in 623 Primary Health Care (PHC) centres.

The Matasan Mata Arewa (MMA) initiative, she added, had reached 75 communities and empowered more than 15,000 girls with entrepreneurship skills and seed capital.

According to her, more than 60,000 girls have accessed contraceptives through the programme, with a reduction in discontinuation rates as more young women sustain use and transition to maternal and child health services.

“These changes have shown a marked reduction in maternal mortality among those communities. It has also reduced negative neonatal outcomes,” she said.

Sadiq recounted an elderly woman’s remarks from a programme community, calling them a strong reflection of the project’s success.

“These girls have spent their whole lives believing they will remain tolerable liabilities to the husbands they marry, but now they are realising the value of becoming appreciated assets,” she quoted.

Sadiq added that Kaduna’s 16 per cent health budget allocation and the integration of A360 activities into the state’s 2025 Annual Operational Plan demonstrated sustained political commitment.

Also speaking, Dr Omokhudu Idogho, Managing Director, SFH, said the four implementing states had successfully embedded A360 approaches into government systems, community structures and routine health practices.

He was represented by Dr Kenechukwu Erichalo, Deputy Managing Director, Project Delivery.

Idogho said the project had reached more than one million adolescent girls with family planning services and engaged over 500,000 others with comprehensive sexuality education messaging.

“We recorded more than 50,000 antenatal care visits, ensuring that girls received skilled care that saved lives, and supported over half a million girls to learn income-generating skills,” he said.

He said A360 pioneered the MMA and Niger Girls models, demonstrating that culturally sensitive, human-centred programmes can succeed even in conservative communities.

“Our most significant achievement is institutionalisation. Today, all 1,750 A360-supported facilities are fully government-led,” he added.

Mrs Roselyn Odeh, A360 Project Lead, said the initiative was developed in response to poor adolescent health indices in the country.

She said the programme ensured respectful, youth-friendly services at PHCs and supported school reintegration and entrepreneurship for girls.

She said the decision to scale the programme in northern states was based on data.

“When you look at maternal mortality among young people, you know the section of the country it is coming from. Data drove our decisions in alignment with government priorities,” she said.

Odeh identified challenges including weak PHC infrastructure, funding gaps, commodity shortages and the need to engage husbands in conservative communities.

“But creatively, we worked with governments to mobilise domestic funding through health revolving funds and the Basic Healthcare Provision Fund,” she said.

Mr Sagir Musa, Commissioner for Youth, Jigawa State, assured of continued commitment from implementing states to sustain and expand the project’s gains.

“This project may be nearing closure, but for us, it has just begun. We have gone beyond its life cycle to embed its approaches in the things we do,” he said.

The dissemination meeting brought together policymakers, community leaders, development partners and beneficiaries to review lessons learned and outline future priorities for scaling adolescent health interventions nationwide.

(NAN)

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