The Kwara State Governor, Alhaji Abdulfatah Ahmed, has identified poor infrastructure and facilities as major challenges of health care delivery in Nigeria.
Governor Ahmed, who made this assertion on Wednesday while receiving members of the Igbomina Mobile Health Clinic Project Implementation Committee on a visit to him at the Government House in Ilorin, stressed the need for other local communities in the state to partner with government in strengthening healthcare delivery through affordable but qualitative primary healthcare services.
According to him, “Health sector requires serious attention, especially in Nigeria as the country has not scaled the minimum threshold that will allow for its development, but with the support initiatives of communities much can be achieved.”
The governor lauded the initiative of Igbomina people in the Diaspora for driving the mobile clinic project through the provision of drugs and other facilities, adding that government alone, no matter how benevolent, could not provide healthcare to the people.
While urging other communities in the State to emulate the Igbomina health support initiative, the governor noted that such interventions could also be made in other sectors such as education, empowerment and social welfare.
The Chairman, Igbomina Mobile Health Clinic Project, Mr. Emmanuel Adewuyi, in his remarks, said that the scheme was designed to cover 254 communities in Ifelodun, Irepodun and Isin local government areas of the state.
Adewuyi said that the project, with 22 highly competent medical personnel, has attended to 550 patients from three communities since it began operation in July this year, stressing that more grounds would be covered in no distant future.
Acknowledging that there was the prevalence of diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, malaria and arthritis in the rural communities, he lamented, “Out of 10 patients, our medical team reported that not less than seven of our rural people are prone to hypertension, which, sadly, was unknown to them”.
Adewuyi commended the state government for its financial and medical support to the project during its take-off stage.
