Rotary District 9110 Nigeria is set to launch a decisive war against cervical cancer, which is now the world’s deadliest women disease.
The 39th District Governor for 2019-2020 Rotary year, Dr. Jide Akeredolu disclosed this at a press conference in Lagos, yesterday. He said everyday, more than 40 women are being diagnosed for cervical cancer.
According to him, the disease has become so deadly that one woman dies of it every 55 minutes .
He, however, said the irony is that although the disease has been killing women on hourly basis all over the world, especially in Third World countries, like Nigeria, it is easily preventable by vaccination.
Dr. Akeredolu said if young girls are immunised against the disease before they attain the age of puberty, it would prevent them from ever contracting it.
He said it is because of this that Rotary District 9110 is working towards raising money to vaccinate 10,000 Nigerian girls below the age of puberty.
Dr. Akeredolu said cervical cancer vaccines are expensive, and added that it would cost more than N200 million to achieve that.
The other projects he hope to undertake, after his installation, on Saturday, is congenital heart disease ,extreme poverty alleviation and digitalization of the districts operations and records.
On congenital heart disease, he said since the operation is not done in Nigeria, they are in contact with an organisation known as Gift of Life International, which has volunteered to come to Nigeria to help children with such challenge.
He said it takes $100,000 to sponsor a mission.
“The third project is called extreme poverty alleviation.There are people who spend almost all their income on food alone. Over 90 million Nigerians fall within this category.We want to save them from this pathetic condition.
“What we hope to do for them is to, at least, lift them from extreme poverty to poverty and that would be by organising vocational training for them, giving them basic healthcare and then, bringing them back into the society; that is social inclusion. We want to train them for six months after which they would be qualified to live a normal life.”