Amby Uneze in Owerri
Not less than 3,000 patients with various degrees of medical challenges were diagnosed and treated in a five-day Jennifer Etu Foundation Free Medical Outreach held from March 17 - 21, 2026 at the foundation’s medical facility in Umunoha, Mbaitoli local government area of Imo State.
The medical outreach which offered complete free services included medical consultations, general and specialized surgeries, ophthalmology, dental care, medications, pharmacology, health promotions, obstetrics and gynaecology and medical laboratories.
Patients’ challenges were identified through a systematic approach by which medical personnel segmented them section by section so as to make it easy and faster to be attended to without wasting too much time on the queue because many patients needed attention.
The goal of the Jennifer Etu free medical outreach was to ensure that everybody that came for the outreach had their medical needs attended and at the end the patients were satisfied with getting their problems solved at no cost to them.
Elaborating the aims of the five-day free medical outreach, the Foundation’s Programme Manager, Mr. Joe Otu said that the good thing about the programme was to provide free and quality medical care not only to the people of Umunoha of Imo State but across other communities in the State as well as the South East and her neighbouring States including Abia, Enugu, Ebonyi, benue, Kogi, Anambra, Rivers, etc.
According to him, we ought to have done this outreach last year, this is the second time we are coming here for the free medical outreach since the Jennifer Etu Foundation hospital started here in Umunoha. This time we are here to take care of the people’s healthcare needs as we treated about 500 people the first day, over 700 the second day, and in all, our target is to cater for the medical needs of about 3,000 patients.
Otu stated “on the first day we had 50 surgeries of ailment, and 30 eye surgeries. We are able to address those with Cataracts, etc and basically it is fulfilling for us seeing these numbers of people with health challenges and are able to address their problems. We noticed that on a normal day, you wouldn’t see many people come because of their economic power and because we are complimenting what the government does, we are satisfied to see people go home happy and their problems solved.
“The foundation focuses on three key parametres: health, education and economic empowerment; on the economic empowerment we reach out to women, widows. Currently in Kaduna State we are working closely with Bill Gate and Malinda Foundation to reach out over 3,000 women skills acquisition, farming, etc and that transcends to other States where we have skill acquisitions centres such as in Kogi State.
“For health, what actually prompted the need for health care facilities is because there is a lacuna in health care and the late wife of the Chairman of the board, Mr. Thomas Etu before she passed on she kindly requested the husband to set up six hospitals across the six geopolitical zones to address health care needs for that woman who found it difficult to access healthcare. That is what we have been able to do overtime. Every year we come up with free medical care for each of these geopolitical zones to cater for 3,000 or more patients across the board.
“People are already anticipating that Jennifer Etu Foundation free medical outreach would come and they are usually getting ready to attend the free medical care services which we offer yearly. For this outreach alone, we have people coming in from Lagos, Cross River, Jos, and that is to tell you how much people are in dear need to attend these programmes without minding transporting themselves just to access healthcare.
“For us healthcare is what we have been doing overtime working with implementing partners. We have doctors and volunteers from different hospitals coming from different parts of the country to volunteer their professional services for free. We work with ProHealth International, they are in the business of volunteering their personnel for medical outreaches across the country. They have a pool of volunteers of medical personnel they bring along for all the outreach. So we work closely with them.
“To bring all the medical personnel and volunteers together and all other facilities definitely runs into several millions of Naira. The services cannot be measured in terms of money figures but the whole essence is to make people across the country happy over their healthcare needs. The founder is fulfilled by seeing people getting satisfaction from their health needs,” Otu said.
In his remarks, Mr. Chidi Nwankpa from ProHealth International stated that the organization is satisfied by serving the underprivileged and to equally propagate voluntarism by helping others without looking for benefits. He said that the notion by the Whites believing that the Blackman cannot help themselves without asking for benefit is what the Jennifer Etu Foundation and ProHealth International had fought for.
He suggested that for government to play active part in the healthcare system of the people she ought to look into the infrastructure of the country’s healthcare, improvement on health insurance scheme so that Nigerians can have access healthcare more than malaria and other basic ailments, and finally the training and retainership of the home grown medical personnel to curb brain drain in the medical profession.
Beneficiaries praised the generosity of Jennifer Etu Foundation, management and staff, their doctors and volunteers for taking care of the medical needs of the people free of charge. For Mr. Anselm Uneze, who came with an eye problem and received free treatment was full of thanksgiving to the foundation for giving him sight again.
0 Comments