Dangote Cement Takes Health Services to Nigeria’s Transit Communities

Dangote Cement Plc, famed for constructing the one-of-a-kind 43km Obajana-Kabba road in Kogi State, went ahead recently (from 29^th November to 1^st December, 2022), to cement its support for Nigeria’s transit communities by conducting the pilot phase of its Safer and Healthier Transit Communities Project.

The scheme, a collaboration with NiGrowth Consults & Services, is the type one would expect the giant cement company to undertake in a country where ordinary folks consider orthodox health services too expensive and so would rather self-medicate or leave themselves to the not so tender mercies of fate. For which reason, there are needless deaths recorded year round both for preventable and clearly curable diseases.

The reason advanced as stated already, is poverty in all its murky manifestations. Money is scarce and so the options available to vulnerable populations are limited. And so, even while health may indeed be wealth in the long run, some measure of wealth is required ab initio to ‘procure’ and or sustain the health that helps create the wealth.

This boggling scenario leaves helpless the common man whose contributions to his/her family and the national economy are undeniable. And for the transit communities especially, it is clear that Dangote Cement feels a certain affinity for and with them seeing as the company’s trucks ply the length and breadth of Nigerian roads as the drivers shuttle back and forth to deliver cement for the plethora of building and construction projects ongoing nationwide. This leaves the drivers and the populations of the standing communities or settlements that spring up around drivers’ stops particularly vulnerable.

It’s in an attempt to frontally address this long standing issue that Dangote Cement decided to team up with NiGrowth Consults and Services. And for this first edition, efforts were concentrated in Benue State, one of the states, alongside Kogi and Edo that have proven commercial reserves of limestone for large scale cement production. And one factor that must have helped to give the project a ring of an emergency is the fact that Benue State has the highest HIV/AIDS Prevalence rate in Nigeria.

According to Dr. Iroro Yarhere, the Managing Director, NiGrowth Consults and Services, his company’s remit from the Sustainability Department of Dangote Cement Plc., was to “help create awareness of HIV/ AIDS among the transit communities, improve knowledge, test for HIV/AIDS, diabetes, hypertension and obesity among the host communities’ indigenes and link positive cases to treatment and management facilities and share report with the communities”.

Dr Yarhere was happy to report that the community engagement in the three locations (Katsina Ala, Aliade and Tse Kutse) went very well as the communities were enthusiastic to be part of the project. Dr. Eugene Ivase, Dangote Cement Community Liaison Officer made sure to do the necessary introductions as he mobilized the chiefs for the three day programme. One of the district chiefs was in fact, the first to be counselled and tested setting the scene for over 880 persons tested overall.

Those who tested positive for HIV/AIDS were counselled to continue their medications and management protocols. And some who tested positive from the first test but later proven to be false positives via a second test were counselled to keep safe and to keep checking their status. Those who had diabetes but had run out of medication were given medications to enable the continuation of their treatment. There was also counselling for those with hypertension.

Aside food that was provided for all, beneficiaries also received antimalarials, blood capsules and tonics, and pain relief medications. One grateful beneficiary remarked that “other agencies come into our communities for these same projects, but the organisation giving medications and testing for other conditions, stands ‘BCC’ out and we are truly grateful.” BCC is the old name for Dangote Cement in Benue State.

Dr Yarhere and his team were full of praise to Dangote Cement for the support and even for getting on board in the first place, for a proposal that did not fly with other corporate organisations. This, he believes, is because of the company’s understanding that “Her employees and host communities need to remain healthy to continue sustaining the development and growth of the cement and eventually real estate and road construction industries”.

This particular Dangote Cement Plc initiative is the right type for a country that only just ceded its ‘poverty capital of the world’ status to India. The hope is that Nigeria never retakes that title, but for that to not happen, access to health services cannot be trifled with. It is only a healthy population that can actively contribute to the creation of wealth. Hopefully, this pilot project is the first of many in several other Nigerian transit communities in future.