The Imo State Government has pledged to construct 260 Primary Healthcare Centres across the state.
Governor Peter Mbah made this known on Sunday during an inspection tour of a primary health centre at Ogonogoeji Ndiuno, Akpugo in the Nkanu West LGA of the state.
He also promised to ensure that every local government area got at least one world-class secondary health facility.
According to the governor, his administration was prioritising healthcare delivery because it understood the importance of a healthy population and workforce.
He promised not to relent until every child, mother, the elderly and all Enugu citizens have access to better healthcare.
According to him, healthcare is at the core of his duties, noting that it is the reason why healthcare is taking the largest chunk of the state’s 2024 budget.
Mbah said that the administration had undertaken a thorough study of the challenges in the primary healthcare space to have reliable data to craft adequate strategies to address them.
“That is why, as you must have heard from the Commissioner for Health, we are going to be developing 260 world-class Type-2 primary healthcare centres across the entire wards in Enugu State.
“Our strategy in that area is that rather than spread ourselves thinly across 557 Primary Healthcare Centres, we want to focus on consolidating our resources and developing 260 world-class Type-2 PHCs.
“This is because we want to provide 24-hour services in each PHC so that at any time, you would have access to quality primary healthcare in our rural communities across the state,” he stated.
The governor said he was already addressing the state’s poor health workforce, while equally paying attention to secondary healthcare.
He said, “As part of our strategies, we are upgrading our nursing schools to colleges so that we can have more intakes and have more nurses and community health extension workers trained to man our PHC facilities.
“Part of our strategy is also to deploy technology. We have now started the process of capturing, in an electronic form, all the reports of those that have access to the healthcare system so that we can have an electronic health management system.”
He harped on the need to bring more Enugu citizens under universal health insurance coverage, saying it was cheaper and more reliable.
“We are also doing something with the universal health coverage. We have to begin to encourage our people to enrol. Just giving N1,000 every month would ensure that your ward has access to primary health care, which comes to N12,000 in a year.
“So, we need to increase awareness in this space for our people to take advantage of it because it does exist.
“We are going to do everything to ensure we continue to improve on our healthcare performance index; and we will not relent until we get to that point where every child, every mother, and every elderly person in this state will have access to primary health care,” he assured.
Meanwhile, the Chief of Field Office, UNICEF, Enugu, Juliet Chiluwe, while commending Mbah’s efforts at improving healthcare and nutrition, also pledged continued support of the international agency to the government.
“Your policies on healthcare and nutrition are commendable. We commend you for aspiring to make the state the best in the nation, and we are certain that with your support, we will win the leadership challenge.
“We are also impressed with the 260 proposed PHCs and UNICEF will support you,” she stated.
The Executive Secretary, Enugu State Primary Healthcare Development Agency, Dr Ifeyinwa Ani-Osheku, also said the state government is embarking on a massive recruitment of health workers in 2024.
She revealed that the state had set up a seven-man committee to assess the performance of LGAs in primary healthcare delivery.
According to her, the agency recorded 75 per cent success on the cervical cancer vaccination campaign in October and also trained midwives to manage obstetrics and child delivery in rural areas.
Meanwhile, the Commissioner for Health, Professor Emmanuel Obi, assured the women that the new PHCs would be accessible to every rural community, saying the state was doing well in the health sector because of the governor’s leadership.
(NAN)
