Akwa Ibom government says it has taken delivery of 25 as containers of state-of-the art medical equipment as part of efforts to refurbish and equip general hospitals to boost healthcare delivery services.
Already three general hospitals located in Etinan, Ikono, and Ikot Okoro in Oruk Anam local government areas of the state have been renovated and provided with modern medical equipment by the state government.
Other secondary health facilities that have been upgraded and renovated include the Immanuel hospital, Eket and General hospital, Ituk Mbang in Uruan local government area.
Before now, the general hospital in Anua, near Uyo had been rehabilitated to serve the health needs of the people within the metropolis as there is no secondary healthcare facility in Uyo local government area.
Dominic Ukpong, commissioner for health who made this known in an interview said the vision of the stat government is to make healthcare services affordable and accessible to all adding that the renovation of the hospitals was part of the vision.
“What we have done in the structures is that we have looked at all the hospitals in the state and made careful selections strategically to refurbish hospitals at locations where they can be very accessible to the majority of the people in a particular area since it is not just practicable to do all in one fell swoop with the limited resources that we have.
“The secondary healthcare centres, we have started reconstructing and refurbishing about eight general hospitals in the state and they are strategically located in all the senatorial districts and essentially covering all the local government areas of the state. We have refurbished significantly and equipped Etinan general hospital, it now has an accident and emergency centre , it has an international standard operating theatre, it has very good network of roads within the premises,’’ Ukpong said.
The commissioner who disclosed that the 25 containers of equipment was part of the 100 containers state government plans to import 100 containers of equipment in all said 20 medical engineers that would be responsible for the maintenance of the equipment to ensure a prolonged lifespan have also been trained.
Lamenting the scarcity of health workers including nurses and doctors as well as other personnel, he said nursing intake has been improved by not only recruiting nurses but by reviewing the policy of their retirements to ensure that their period of their training is not part of their service record.
Ukpong who commended Governor Udom Emmanuel for vision in the health sector which according to him has facilitated the turnaround of the secondary healthcare services said the state government has started moves to ensure the digitalisation of services in the hospital to shorten the time patients spend before being made to see a doctor.
“What we have done to compensate for lack of adequate staff is to institute medical digitalisation of services in the hospital to make the hospitals computerised so that somebody who comes in will be registered in the computer and as his details are being keyed in, those details will automatically will be in the computers of the various segments of the hospital,’’ he said.
Checks have also showed that the completion of one of the largest syringe manufacturing factories by the state government would also be a big boost to healthcare services in the state
