October 27, 2017

The medical outreach of the Nigerian Air Force (NAF) in Borno is yielding result with the successful general and eye surgeries performed on 69 Internally Displaced people (IDPs) from various camps.

The NAF’s spokesman, Air Commodore Olatokunbo Adesanya, who disclosed this in a statement on Friday in Abuja, said that the programme would be extended to over 4,000 IDPs in Monguno.

Adesanya quoted the NAF’s Chief of Medical Services Branch, AVM Saleh Shinkafi, as saying that the programme was designed to get the support of the locals in the conflict areas.

According to him, during the programme, free medical treatment will be provided to IDPs.

“There number could increase as a result of the intensive day and night aerial bombardments by NAF.

“The Chief of Air Staff (CAS), Air Marshal Sadique Abubakar, had also directed that surgeries be conducted, at no cost to the IDPs, for those requiring surgical interventions.

“A team of additional medical specialists has been deployed to NAF 105 Composite Group Medical Centre to augment the existing medical manpower for the programme.

“Upon deployment, the medical team immediately started attending to critical surgical cases in IDP camps around Maiduguri.

“So far, NAF medical outreach team has successfully performed 21 general surgeries and 48 eye surgeries on IDPs from the various camps at no cost to them,” Shinkafi was quoted as saying.

Adesanya said the director said further that another set of 250 will benefit from free surgical interventions within the 2-day period.

“This is the fifth cycle of free surgical interventions lined up by NAF for the IDPs in the past two years, during which an average of 200 surgeries were carried out per cycle,” he said.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that NAF commenced Operation “RUWAN WUTA II”, a few days ago, to further degrade the capability of the insurgents.