Kwara State Governor, Dr Abdulfatah
Ahmed has identified poor infrastructure and facilities as major challenges in
health care delivery in the country.
The Governor who made this assertion
yesterday when members of the Igbomina Mobile Health Clinic Project
implementation committee paid him a courtesy visit at the Government House in
Ilorin, called on local communities to partner the state in strengthening
healthcare delivery through affordable but qualitative primary healthcare
services.
According to the governor, “Health
sector requires serious attention, especially in Nigeria as the country has not
scaled minimum threshold that will allow for its development, but with the
support initiatives of communities much could be achieved”.
Governor Ahmed commended the Igbomina
people in diaspora for driving the mobile clinic project through the provision
of drugs and other facilities, adding that government alone in the country
cannot provide healthcare to the people.
The governor urged other communities in
the State to emulate the Igbomina’s health support initiative, stressing that
such intervention could be in other sectors like education, empowerment and
social welfare.
The Chairman, Igbomina Mobile Health
Clinic Project, Mr Emmanuel Adewuyi, in his remarks, said the scheme was
designed to cover 254 communities in Ifelodun, Irepodun and Isin local
government areas of the State.
Mr Adewuyi said the project with 22
highly competent medical personnel has attended to 550 patients from three
communities since it began operation in July this year.
According to the Chairman, there was
prevalence of diseases like hypertension, diabetics, malarias and arthritis in
the rural communities “out of 10 patients, our medical team reported that not
less than 7 of our rural people are prone to hypertension, which, sadly, was
unknown to them”.
Mr Adewuyi commended the state
government for its financial and medical support to the project at take off.