Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
Moved by the total absence of paediatrics cancer centre at the Abuja Teaching Hospital, Abuja Metropolitan Lions Club, has promised to deliver a brand new furnished paediatrics cancer centre to the teaching hospital within a duration of six months.
Newly installed club president, Lion Charlz Opusunju, who made the disclosure in Abuja, also revealed that the club had last week commissioned and donated a solar-powered borehole to Tungamaji, an Abuja community, assuring they members are determined to continue touching the lives of the poor in the society.
“Right from July this year, we have commenced work. We have carried out some projects already and have already commissioned and donated 6000 boreholes built for an Abuja community called Tungamaji. We did the solar borehole through direct labour and supervised by our members that are professional in the field. It costs us about N2 million and the funds for the project was contributions from members,” he noted.
On the hospital project, Lion Opusunju said: “We are already raising funds to build a paediatrics cancer centre inside the University of Abuja Teaching Hospital. This is going to be our major project and will cost us about N45 million. We visited the Teaching hospital and discovered that there was no ward for paediatric cancer patients.
“We then took it as a challenge to provide the facility for them. Interestingly, people hardly talk about paediatric cancer because it is always overshadowed by adult cancer. This is what propelled us to start creating awareness that there is also cancer among children. It is a huge task but we intend to accomplish it in the next six months and we urge Nigerians to key into it. We intend to build and possibly furnish depending on the amount we can raise,” he promised.
On the hurdles before his new administration, he said: “The challenges we face in humanitarian services is that we have noticed that the less privileged suffer too much while the rich are not interested in helping the poor but prefer flaunting their wealth.”
Similarly, the immediate past president, Lion Monik Wilson, in enumerating the various projects carried out by his regime, said: “We actually did so much in terms of project execution during my tenure. We touched lives at the FCT School of the blinds, by providing some signage for people to easily locate the place.
“We screened them to ascertain the level of their sight problem and we celebrated with them. To cap it all, we built and furnished a resource centre for the school because the students needed a library where they can keep their belongings.
“We visited Government Secondary School in Nyanya, distributed sanitary pads to many of the girls desperately in need of them, we also distributed customised notebooks, biros and other items the students genuinely need but cannot afford,” she noted.