By AbdulGaneey Akanbi<\/p>\n
The National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, and the Onyebuchi Chris Ifediora, OCI, Foundation International have renewed their partnership to expand breast and cervical cancer awareness to all 37 NYSC orientation camps nationwide.<\/p>\n
The renewed commitment was announced during the retraining of NYSC officers and state campaign anchors on Monday in Abuja, where both organisations called for nationwide implementation of the “Arm Our Youths, ArOY, Anti-Cancer Health Campaign”<\/p>\n
President of the OCI Foundation, Associate Professor Chris Ifediora, represented by Lady Frances Nkem, said the programme is designed to equip young Nigerians with knowledge for the prevention and early detection of breast and cervical cancers.<\/p>\n
She noted that the initiative, which received NYSC’s support in 2021, has grown into one of Nigeria’s largest youth-led preventive health campaigns, with 26 editions already completed across most camps.<\/p>\n
“The campaign now reaches more than 500,000 corps members annually with life-saving cancer awareness and health education,” she said, disclosing that the programme has also expanded through community outreach, volunteer networks, social media and the CerviBreast mobile application.<\/p>\n
The Foundation urged NYSC to support the expansion to all 37 camps and to formally establish the ArOY Health Campaign CDS group for year-round health promotion. <\/p>\n
It also announced plans to strengthen cervical cancer screening at camps and introduce BACERS, a programme to train corps members in CPR and emergency response.<\/p>\n
Breast and cervical cancers remain among the leading causes of cancer-related deaths among women worldwide. Health experts say early detection through screening significantly improves survival, but late diagnosis and poor access to care continue to drive preventable deaths in Nigeria.<\/p>\n
Speaking at the event, Director of CDS and Special Projects at NYSC, Chief Chiwendu Chukwu, described cancer as one of the world’s biggest public health challenges and reaffirmed the Scheme’s commitment to combating it through education.<\/p>\n
“This initiative will create a new generation of young advocates for cancer prevention by equipping corps members with life-saving knowledge they can share in their host communities,” he said, urging Schedule Officers to coordinate the campaign effectively and commended OCI Foundation for the partnership.<\/p>\n
The expanded collaboration is expected to deepen cancer awareness among hundreds of thousands of corps members annually, enabling them to serve as advocates for prevention, early diagnosis and healthier communities across Nigeria.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By AbdulGaneey Akanbi The National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, and the Onyebuchi Chris Ifediora, OCI, Foundation International have renewed their partnership to expand breast and cervical cancer awareness to all 37 NYSC orientation camps nationwide. The renewed commitment was announced during the retraining of NYSC officers and state campaign anchors on Monday in Abuja, where […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15721,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6208],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-patriotism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15749"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15750,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15749\/revisions\/15750"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}