The Ogun State government has opened oxygen therapy centre to avoid scarcity of life-saving clinical equipment and consumables in preparedness to contain the second wave of Covid-19 in the country.
Similarly, the Ondo State government has upgraded its healthcare delivery system with improved services to the residents through what it called ‘Kaadi Igbeayo’ and contributory healthcare scheme.
Speaking at the opening of oxygen therapy centre at the Infectious Disease Hospital with 20 beds of high dependency capacity at Iberekodo in Abeokuta, Tomi Coker, the Ogun State commissioner for health, affirmed that the country was facing a health crisis with the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, describing the new strain as highly infectious.
“The Olabisi Onabanjo University Teaching Hospital (OOUTH) Isolation centre is at 90 percent capacity right now, which means that people have to take cognizance of being responsible for their own health.
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“Our positivity rate prior to December was hovering around 0.7 – 0.8 percent but since December, particularly January, our positivity rate has gone up by about 8 percent which means that this second wave is real. Hence, we all have to pay attention and do all the necessary things needed to protect ourselves.
“We are more concern as a state but we are prepared. We have OOUTH, Federal Medical Centre, Abeokuta, Ikenne Isolation Centres all available. Our Oxygen Therapy Centre in Iberekodo, Abeokuta will help to ensure that we do not run out of oxygen like some states are experiencing at the moment. We are responding appropriately to contain and curtail this second wave”, she said.
Also, Oluwole Ige, the chief medical director of Ondo State University of Medical Sciences Teaching Hospital Complex (UNIMEDTHC), noted that the state medical facilities and management had been improved on, just as infrastructure deficit, brain drain and medical tourism had been worked on in the past three years.
He said: “We are not there yet but still we have moved forward from where we started and we will continue to improve. Overall, the balance of the whole thing I think we are progressing.
“There is a demand for more healthcare delivery and the issue of health personnel is low to the need of the population. One of the ways to bridge that gap is to bring personnel from outside the country or to look for them within the locality base on what you can produce.
“In the whole of Southwest, it is only Ondo State that didn’t have medical school before and when this present administration came on board, it started teaching hospital and by March this year, it would be exactly three years that we started teaching hospital in Ondo State.
“This is the fastest-growing teaching hospital in Nigeria, there is no teaching hospital in Nigeria with the history that we had.
“We were able to gather at least 20 post-graduate accreditations across all various department and with this we will be graduating our medical students in record time.
