By Gabriel Elozino
Wife of Delta State governor, Dame Edith Okowa, has flagged off a five- day free medical outreach for residents of Ughelli and environs in Delta state under her O5 initiative. Speaking at the opening of the event at Ughelli Central Hospital, yesterday, Dame Okowa urged the residents to take full advantage of the programme to ensure their health challenges were addressed.
The outreach which specifically targeted eye patients according to the First Lady was part of her own way of helping the challenged in the society. She urged political office holders in the area to reach out to their people by providing the necessary assistance especially to those in the hinterlands to ensure they take part in the programme, adding that it was the only way their mission would be achieved.
She said, “we have flagged off but staying here without people to treat we will achieve nothing. So they will do their own part, we have done our own part. “I’m a teacher by profession, I don’t know anything about medicine, it’s just a passion that I have.
I don’t have any knowledge about medicine, the only knowledge I have is the one I hear people talk about and I now imbibe. Speaking further, she said after completing the programme in the 25 local governments of the state she would wait for God’s leading to know her next line of action.
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Reacting to the initiative, a former member of the House of Representatives, Hon. Solomon Awhinawhi described Dame Okowa as being passionate about the plights of the people. He said, “I have seen that she have done so well, she is not a medical doctor but a teacher but it is her passion that’s driving her to do all she is doing and I think she has done well.”
Speaking on behalf of the Ughelli people, the President General of Ughelli Descendants Union (UDU) Chief Pius Omubaye said they were ready to mobilise as many that may be having any form of eye defect to the programme. He expressed the appreciation of the Ughelli people to the First Lady for bring the programme to them. In the same vein, Chief Omonefe Uwanogho thanked her excellence for the programme, pointing that it would provide a lease of life and hope to those who due to financial constraints may have lost all hope of treating their eye defects.
