610,000 Niger Deltans benefit from Shell’s free health scheme

The Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) says no fewer than 610,000 people in Niger Delta have so far benefitted from its free health interventions in the past eight years.

General Manager, External Relations at SPDC, Mr Igo Weli, stated this at the opening ceremony of a Community Healthcare Programme at Onopa in Yenagoa, Bayelsa on Wednesday.

Weli, who was represented by Mr Wakil Layiwola, a Manager at the External Relations Department of SPDC, noted that the oil firm believed that a healthy population was critical to a productive workforce.

He said that the programme took quality free healthcare services to the doorsteps of benefitting communities where it operated.

“The Community Care Programme was introduced over a decade ago in the Niger Delta and has since reached thousands of people across Nigeria with its free medical health component tagged ‘Health-in-Motion’ he said.