Belle-Bijou organises health screening for Ayeduase-Kotei community

Residents of Ayeduase-Kotei community in the Ashanti Region have benefited from a free health screening exercise organised by a non-governmental organisation, (NGO) Belle Bijou.

About 200 people between 18 and 70 years went through various health screening exercises, including blood pressure, Hepatitis B, random blood sugar testing, eye examination and other health issues.

Health experts also used the occasion to educate the local people on the need to maintain good hygiene, especially at their various homes and workplaces.

More programmes

Speaking to the Daily Graphic, the founder of Belle Bijou, Ms Joan Benson Nkansah Ntim, said the foundation, since its establishment last year, had undertaken many community programmes.

She mentioned adult education programmes as one of the major events the organisation embarked on last year, and added that the purpose of the foundation was to help address some of the issues confronting the growth of communities and individuals.

The mission of the foundation is to incorporate educative literacy in the lives of individuals deprived of education in the early stages of their life. The foundation’s vision is to bring comfort to people and empower them to pursue their goals and objectives concerning their life’s pursuit,” Ms Ntim said.

This year, she said the foundation would introduce a programme where renowned entrepreneurs “who have excelled in their field of work to help nurture, train and empower young people in entrepreneurship”.

“Belle Bijou foundation believes in the core value of empowered people that add or build value to themselves.

Belle Bijou’s fundamentally focuses on the essence of education to equip the value of every man in society.

Screening

Explaining why the foundation decided to embark on the screening, she said many people, especially the poor, were living with various diseases which many of them were unaware of.

“The essence of the free health screening was to help them know their health status so that anybody who needed urgent assistance would take the steps to address them,” Ms Ntim said.

The founder of the organisation, who is a final year student of  the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), said the community was chosen because most of the residents were old people who needed constant health checks.

Ms Ntim, however, advised the public to regularly visit the hospital to check their health status, considering the fact that most people died as a result of unknown health problems.

She also appealed to corporate institutions to help the foundation to expand its activities.