Health
THE Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), Kaduna Sector Command, on Sartuday offered eyes, suger level and blood pressure checkup, for Kaduna drivers.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), reports that the free medical checkup was done as part of the FRSC corporate social responsibility, while on a one-day ember months safety campaign at the 740 Motor Park in Kaduna.
The Kaduna Acting Sector Commander of the FRSC, DCC Garba Lawal, said the excercise was to ensure safety and zero or drastic reduction of road crashes, especially during the yuletide and the 2023 general elections usually characterised by increase in vehicular movements.
The safety campaign was tagged ‘Avoid speeding, overloading and unsafe tyres to arrive alive’.
Lawal, represented by Deputy Corps Commander (DCC) Operations, Solomon Igbogbo, said the medical outreach, especially the eye check, was to enable the drivers have good judgment on the needful while on road.
“Once you have a good sight, you have a good judgment and vice versa; we have been able to identify poor judgment as one of the major causes of crashes on our high ways, which results from poor eye sight.
“Once light is beamed on drivers who have poor eye sight while driving, they loose judgment as a result of the temporary blindness that immediately ocours,”he said.
Lawal added that the eye check would enable the drivers to know if they had any problem association to the eyes, noting that the eyes were a very important part of the body which needed proper maintenance.
He also said the other medical checkups were critical, especially to ensure that drivers were healthy before plying the road.
He said drivers who needed eye glasses would be given medical advice and to those who engaged in unhealthy lifestyle that might affect their means of livelihood as drivers.
He called on drivers to avoid night travels, noting that the year end was accompanied by hazy weather.
“Drivers must be contented, they will want to make more journeys during this period, to make up for the losses they had during the rainy season which had less people that engaged in journey,” said.
Lawal also called on the drivers to have good tyres, light system and ensure being in good state of health before plying the road.
Also, an optometrist, Dr. Chris Ohacha, said the driver on the wheel was confronted with averlant situations which he had to make fast decisions within seconds to avert road crash.
He said that the driver’s response to the situation depended on quality and quantity of visual information his eyes could gather around and send to the brain for processing and reintegration for prompt decision making.
“Once the sight is bad, then there is high chance of road crash, hence the need for the eye check among other medical checkup,”he said.
Speaking on behalf of the drivers, the Chairman of the 740 Motor Park, Alhaji Muhammad Barau, thanked the FRSC for the gesture.
He said the medical checkup would go along way in complementing their efforts to ensure healthy drivers which would translate to reduction in road crashes.
NAN reports that the hospitals that facilitated the checkup were Barau Dikko Teaching Hospital, Saint Gerald, Harmony Hospital and Thelish Eye Centre.(NAN)
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Tags: Alhaji Muhammad Barau DCC Garba Lawal FRSC
