UUTH Doctors Offer Free Healthcare To Children With Disabilities.
Aid came the way of children with disabilities at the Special Education Center, Etoi community in Uyo local government area of Akwa Ibom State last week when Association of Resident Doctors, University of Uyo, Teaching Hospital, UUTH, offered them free healthcare services.
According to the President of the association, Dr Walshak; “We decided to come here through our reach out programme “T-DROP” because these are children with disabilities. Some are deaf and dumb; some are born with congenital disorder. Living with a disability is very challenging in our society.
“We will also select those who have hearing disabilities, take them to the teaching hospital for an audiometric test. Those who will qualify for use of hearing aids we will make arrangement to procure the hearing aids for them. And we identified that there are some unmet needs here especially in the areas of learning materials, medication, feeding and clothing.”
At the same time, Chairman of the AGM planning Committee, Dr Emem Peters, who said they found the school in the course of planning the event, revealed that they were able to embark on the outreach by tasking themselves and supports received from some public-spirited individuals and some government officials.
Peters who is also Senior Registrar Community Health Department UUTH, further added that: “We plan to be visiting this school periodically because there are so many unmet needs here. And these are children who require special care, so we have to follow them up because we intend to sustain this partnership.”
The principal of the Centre, who is also director Special Education Akwa Ibom State Ministry of Education, Mrs Esther Emmanuel Unung, has expressed happiness for the effort, saying it would complement what the state government is doing to ensure the children at the centre get good healthcare services.
