The Lions Club International Foundation (LCIF), Nigeria chapter on Friday in Abuja said it was putting in place an investment structure for the establishment of a world-class eye hospital in Nigeria.
Mr Ademola Adesoye, the Second Vice District Governor of Lion Club District 404 B2, who made this known at a news conference said that the hospital would treat not less than 50 million Nigerians annually.
Adesoye said that all plans had been concluded to build the hospital which would be located in Abuja so that all regions of the country could access it.
He said that the centre of excellence, apart from checking capital flight would also attract patients from other African countries.
He said that the hospital, which would have specialised personnel and facilities for advanced medical investigation and treatment, would carry out operations like corneal transplant among others.
He said that corneal transplantation, also known as corneal grafting “is a surgical procedure where a damaged or diseased cornea is replaced by donated corneal tissue.’’
“Lion Club in Nigeria has four major districts, that is District 404A1, District 404 A2, District 404 B1, District 404 B2 and each district have its own specific assignment to carry out in its region.
“For the purpose of collective service, we will be putting up a world-class eye hospital in Abuja which will be better than the only one we have in Africa located in Kenya.
“It is going to do transplants where we will remove the whole eye and put another eye and those are the kind of things the hospital will do here.
“We have done many projects in other parts of Nigeria but the one we are putting up in Abuja will collectively serve everybody.
“Once this project is here, everybody across Nigeria can access it even people from West Africa and other African nations too,’’ he said.
Adesoye said that the construction of the hospital had started, adding that the group had also started capacity building for doctors, creating awareness and screening of professionals.
He said that the club had in the past sponsored blind people for operations and had carried out humanitarian services in other areas.
He said that the group would train more doctors to specialise in eye treatment in order not to import doctors from abroad.
He added that the club would do that in collaboration with the Nigerian Medical Association and government before the end of this lion’s year – which is from July 1 2018 to June 2019.
Adesoye said that apart from the project in Abuja, each district would carry out its own, adding that District 404 B2 just signed an MoU with teaching hospital in Ekiti.
He said this was for the building of a diabetic centre to touch the lives of not less 20 million Nigerians within that district alone as its contribution for this year.
The International President, Ms Gudrun Yngvadottir said that Lions Clubs provided grant funding to assist Lions districts in developing and implementing large-scale humanitarian projects.
Yngvadottir said that these humanitarian grants help Lions expand their outreach and increase their impact within local and global communities to serve even more people in need around the world.
She said that in addition to serving locally, Lions support five global service areas which included vision, hunger, the environment, childhood cancer and diabetes.
She said that her visit to Nigeria was to thank the lions for the enormous contributions to humanity, adding that the aim was to serve more than 200 million people.
She said that since Nigeria was the biggest country in the continent, its humanitarian effort of lions would go a long way to make a difference in tackling crisis.
Yngvadottir urged them to continue to be relevant to communities to make a difference in the lives of people.
NAN