The 400 membership of Association of Resident Doctors in the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital (UITH) has embarked on rural medical posting/outreach with the aim of complementing government efforts on rural community health care programme.

Speaking at the free screening exercise for non communicable diseases like hypertension and diabetes among civil servants in Ilorin, the president of the association, Dr. Dele Tajudeen, said the programme was part of goals aimed at giving back to the community.

Dr. Tajudeen, who said the pilot exercise of the rural medical outreach had been carried out in Offa and Esie communities, adding that resident doctors from core departments like surgeon, gynaecologists, paediatrician and medical interns were deployed to the rural communities to see to the health needs of the people, know what was on ground, and how to improve on them, as well as knowing new findings in the field of medicine.

He said the programme was done with the support of the Chief Medical Director of the UITH, Abdulwahab Olatinwo, adding that the NMA in the state was involved in similar programme.

Tajudeen, who is also the senior registrar in the department of Family Medicine, lauded the impact of the state government on rural health, particularly in the area of provision of ambulances to improve rural health.

He said the association aimed to complement state government’s efforts in giving better health care services to people of the state.

Speaking on the free medical screening for civil servants in the ministry of Ediucation, Tajudeen said that the association noticed a new trend in distribution of diseases, whereby non communicable diseases like hypertension and diabetes were dominating in the environment as against communicable ones before now.