A Non Governmental Organisation (NGO), Street Priest Incorporated has carried-out a two day medical outreach in Calabar to curb deaths of street children in the city.
The outreach which was done in partnership with Asi Ukpo Hospital and Comprehensive Cancer Center among other collaborators commenced on Tuesday and was be rounded-off on Wednesday.
Speaking to journalists, Mr Miracle France, Chief Story Teller of Street Priest Incorporated, said they had to carryout the campaign in July because of the number of children they had lost due to lack healthcare.
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“We just didn’t want to lose more of these children to medical cases irrespective of the fact that they don’t have access to healthcare.
“So we decided to organise this campaign to raise funds that can help tackle the health challenges of these children popularly called ‘skolombo’ in Calabar,” he said.
He said few weeks ago they had carried out testing for the Human Immune Virus (HIV) on many of the children, luckily, non of them was infected but they had to go a step further to test the children for malaria in partnership with Asi Ukpo Hospital.
According to him in 2016 they lost Nduke, John in 2020, Ezekiel in 2024 who was a stage four tuberculosis and HIV patient and most recently was Daniel who had stepped on a sharp metal in a refuse dump and died few days later.
“So, to curb these incidents that keep reoccurring, we decided to partner with health organisations to save some of these children before their situation get worse by having free or subsidised care for these children.
“Apart from Asi Ukpo Hospital, we are working on a partnership with the University of Calabar Teaching Hospital (UCTH) and some key pharmacies in town,” he said.
He said support from the government of Cross River had been ineffective because of the continuous change in administration but individual government officials like Sen. Asuquo Ekpenyong and Dr Betta Edu had supported their projects in the past.
He noted that one of the project they received support from Ekpenyong was the case of saving George, a street child who was almost killed by a hit-and-run driver but for the timely intervention of Street Priest Incorporated.
France maintained that they don’t run a facility for the children because many of the street children had homes that they ran away from due to either poor parenting, poverty, peer pressure among others.
“What we do is run a rehabilitation system by tracing a street child’s home and begin working with the child by reforming his mind, after which he’s taking back to his home and we have some success stories.
“We then partner with the family of the child for them to take care of the child’s basic needs such as accommodation and feeding while we concentrate on the child’s education in school or learning a skill depending on the child’s preference,” he said.
On his part, one of the street children, 14 year old Miracle Nsifon, said he left home because his single mother was poor.
Nsifon who said they slept at the Mary Slessor Roundabout and begged around the Bogobiri area of Calabar said he would like to go to school if given the opportunity.
“Even if I go back home, I don’t know if I will be able to go to school because my mother said she does not have money,” he said.
