From Chijioke Agwu, Abakaliki
The Ebonyi State government has advocated community partnership in the provision and maintenance of public healthcare facilities in the state. It also said that public hospitals in the state will receive special attention this year.
Commissioner for Health, Dr. Daniel Umezuruike, stated this at Okposi General Hospital, in Okposi community of Ohaozara Local Government Area of the state, on December 26, 2021, while inaugurating a water reticulation project executed by Okposi Development Forum (ODF).
Umezuruike, who was represented by the Chief Medical Officer of the hospital, Dr. Charles Alike, said the challenges of medical personnel witnessed in some general hospitals in the state will soon be resolved as the government was embarking on recruitment and posting of medical doctors and other medical personnel.
He commended the people of Okposi for supporting the effort of government in providing infrastructure to the general hospital.
President of ODF, Emenike Okorie, said the water reticulation project was phase one of the three different projects the organisation planned for the hospital.
He described the project as a dream come true, noting that they embarked on the project to support the government’s effort in equipping the hospital with the capacity to attend to the medical needs of the people.
He decried the former condition of the hospital where medical staff and patients went through difficulties in accessing water, saying such conditions should not be found in a hospital environment.
Okorie, who commended the hospital management for their support and cooperation which led to the successful completion of the project, added that the forum would soon commence the next phases of its projects in the hospital.
According to him, the next phase of their projects in the hospital will focus on repairing windows, broken doors and leaking roofs, while the third phase will be the installation of solar-power lights in all parts of the hospital.
Commending the Ebonyi State Government for the infrastructure it provided in the hospital, Okorie said their effort was only supportive of the government and urged the state ministry of health to make urgent effort to provide the necessary manpower to make the general hospital truly functional.
“What we have done is to reticulate water to all parts of the hospital. Everywhere you are, there is water; you don’t need to run around looking for water. And that is just phase one. Phase two is the repair of windows, broken doors and some other civil works in the hospital to make it a functional hospital. Phase three is the electricity issue. They have generators here but they can’t maintain them. So, what we want to do is to provide solar lights which are maintenance free.
“What we are doing is to support the efforts of the government. You can see the walls, the fence, the gates, all of them are provided by the government. So, we are only supporting the infrastructure but there is a limit to what we can do. Our special request is that when we provide the infrastructure, the government should provide the manpower needed to run the hospital. We want to have resident doctors here so that each time you come here there will be a doctor on duty. If the government can do that for us, we will be grateful. We need the adequate number of staff required to work here; the doctors, the nurses, the pharmacists, the lab scientists and all other necessary departmental specialists. It is a partnership; they bring, we bring and we make this place truly general hospital,” Okorie said.
The member representing Ohaozara East in Ebonyi State House of Assembly, Lilian Nwachukwu, lauded the state government for renovating the hospital and promised to deploy her office to support ODF in other projects to be carried out in the hospital.
Also, Raphael Okereke, a dentist and leader of the Make Our Hospital Work team, in Okposi community, expressed great happiness that the group’s advocacy to make hospitals work in the country was beginning to yield the expected results.
He recalled how his team began the journey towards drawing attention to the dilapidated nature of government hospitals in Ebonyi State and the need for the government and the people to pay attention to them.
He said: “It was Dr Laz Eze, the convener of Make Our Hospital Work in Nigeria, who started this project with his advocacy. He contacted me from Abuja and we began the process of getting the attention of the people on the need to make our hospital work. We started by meeting our traditional rulers, community leaders and other stakeholders towards the actualization of this noble initiative.”
A medical doctor from the community, Dr. Chika Igwenyi, praised the can-do-spirit of Okposi people, noting that there was no project too big for them to execute.
On the challenge of lack of staff bedeviling the hospital, he pledged to liaise with other medical professionals from the community to schedule consultancy work with the hospital to ensure that it was upgraded to meet the needs of the people.
The ODF sub-committee chairman on works, Chief Willie Nwachukwu, gave more insight into the projects of the forum in the hospital, saying that repair works will commence in January, 2022, while the formal commissioning of all the projects executed by the body in the hospital will take place latest in April.
“We have called for tenders for the solar power. We are in the process of evaluating the tenders and by the grace of God, we will be awarding the contract very soon. We believe that before the end of the first quarter of 2022 everything about fixing our general hospital will be completed,” Nwachukwu enthused.
He urged members of the community to tell their wards to start coming to the hospital for medical attention, adding that everything required for quality health care delivery will be provided in the hospital as soon as possible.