In line with its mission to improve health and well-being of people, the Lions Club International, District 404B2 Nigeria, reaffirmed its commitment to patients’ support during its working visit to the Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital Complex, Ile-Ife, to mark the World Aids Day on Friday, December 1, 2023.
Receiving the team on behalf of the Chief Medical Director, Prof. John Okeniyi, the Ag. Chairman, Medical Advisory Committee, (CMAC),Prof. Josephine Eziyi, lauded the Club for its numerous relief interventions, awareness and advocacy programs in the last few years.
Prof. Eziyi, commended the team for choosing the OAUTHC, Ile-Ife to mark the day with the patients living with HIV/AIDS, saying that the Management would continue to collaborate with the Club to achieving greater success in patients’ support system.
In his remarks, the District Governor, Lions Club 404B2, Prof. Emmanuel Fagbohun, retraced the history of Lions Club International, saying that the organization which started in 1917, has gone a long way to bring succor to patients in communities across the world. He said that support and intervention successes have been recorded in major diseases like cancer, diabetes, heart disease and HIV/AIDS.
In his comment, the chairman of the occasion, Lion (Prof.) Rasaq Adebayo, said, the program was sponsored to educate the people living with HIV/AIDS and gift them with food items as a relief.
Prof. Adebayo recounted the organization’s landmark achievements in the recent time. He revealed that the organization distributed over 200 gift items to secondary school students in Ajebamidele area of Ile-Ife, during 2022 World Food Day. He added that other rounds of intervention were also carried out in Obstetrics, Gynecology and Oncology clinics same year.
Meanwhile, the Project Coordinator, IHVN, Prof. Ebunoluwa Adejuyigbe, in her keynote address at the event to mark this year’s World Aids Day said, HIV/AIDS pandemic is very much under control now unlike what was obtainable in the past, highlighting how people contract HIV/AIDS, she said, “It is usually contracted through sexual intercourse. It can also be transmitted from a parent to the child and by using an unsterilized sharp object.”
She, however, assured that ” HIV/AIDS patients could still have sex with their partners without contracting it by taking their drugs regularly. With the drugs, a mother can breastfeed her child without infecting the child” .
