As part of its corporate social responsibility initiative, zeal and passion to maintain a healthy environment, ALVIVA Healthcare Foundation, owned by seasoned professional, Biomedical scientist, Eniyema Otiti Ajala in collaboration with WORLD HEALTH ORGANISATION and other international concerned organization is set to provide free cervical cancer screening to women in Nigeria, while they sensitized residence on the need for cancer prevention.
Available statistics in Nigeria shows that cervical cancer kills a woman every hour, which is an equivalent of 8, 000 deaths in a year.
Further reports also revealed that 100, 000 new cancer cases are added to the pool every year in the absence of screening.
The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, ALVIVA Healthcare Foundation, Eniyema Ajala said, ignorance remains a major barrier to tackling cancer in Nigeria, adding that there is need to intensify advocacy on regular screening in order to detect the disease early, which saves lives.
She said prevention is the best way to reduce the burden of the disease in Nigeria, which was why the organization, took the awareness to the grass root.
“The way people die of cancer nowadays is devastating and so we need to create more awareness because ignorance is no longer an excuse. We need to see how we can assist people to get more conscious and aware of healthy living, which is part of our giving back to the society as an organization,” she said.
“The modality of preventing cancer is very simple, which is screening, although, there are vaccines that could be given to eliminating the virus. The bad side is that when it is not detected early, it develops and then the person will have to manage the disease in order to prolong the person’s life, which is why as a non-governmental organization, we will continue to support and promote prevention and early screening to the grass root,” she added.
Her passion was borne out of her willingness to help the helpless, and considering the fact that she has also been a victim of the scourge. The cancer cause was borne from her experience from a lump in her breast after her mum also survived breast lump.
“I want to have an awareness programme where we will advise people and educate them on prevention and conduct of regular test, for this we already have a couple of professionals who already know how best to go about it and also help in reducing the cost of conducting the test which is one of the major reasons people are not checking themselves”.
Eniyema Otiti Ajala
Eniyema started from the UK, where she resides and decided to bring it down to Nigeria considering the high rate of victims in Nigeria and Africa as a whole.
When asked how she hopes to raise funds to affect the life of the helpless, Eniyema Ajala admits that with her connection in the international environment, she will get grants, and that, to an extent will help carry the project to a commendable stage where lives will be touched.
” We are hoping to get grants from the UK by talking to the World Health Organization and DFID, who have always had a budget for Africans, in this regard, we hope to utilize this to make people get educated and enlightened about the cancer detection and how to prevent it as a woman”.
Adding that, “we already realize that we will be visiting the rural areas and have an engaging conversation with the uneducated people and the low-income earners. Collecting their data, and speaking the language they understand in order to get all and sundry involved in this project”.
The Benin Born Eniyema Otiti Ajala is a wife, and mother of 6 kids. She studied History at the prestigious University Of Benin before proceeding to the United Kingdom where she bagged another degree in Biomedical science from the University of Greenwich Medway Kent. She has been fighting this cause for over a decade in England before she later decided to bring it down to Nigeria going by the high rate of Nigerian women who die daily from the ignorance of the scourge.
SUNDAY ADEBAYO.