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Ondo boosts healthcare delivery with new facilities

By Oluwaseun Akingboye, Akure
24 March 2016   |   1:10 am
One of the major challenges of government at all levels in the country is the provision of accessible and cheap health care delivery to the citizenry.

Public-health

One of the major challenges of government at all levels in the country is the provision of accessible and cheap health care delivery to the citizenry. This is more so as health facilities across the country have often been described as mere consulting clinics due to dearth and aging medical equipment.

Despite huge investment in health sector by successive governments over the years, the situation has not changed. The rich in the society and particularly government officials blamed their trip abroad in search of health care on the poor medical facility.

Apparently aware of the poor healthcare delivery coupled with the determination to make a difference, the Ondo State government established a medical village in Ondo town to serve as a secondary and tertiary referral medical facility to all basic health centres spread across villages and hamlets across the state.

According to the state government, “The point of entry into effective healthcare system is the Primary Health Care (PHC). Any case that cannot be handled at this level will be referred to the Mother and Child Hospital located in Akure, the state capital or the Medical Village in Ondo.

Essentially, the Medical Village consists of Mother and Child Hospital, Kidney Care Center, the Gani Fawehinmi Diagnostic Centre, Trauma and Surgical Center and the University of Medical Science. It also housed an emergency communication centre, Histopathology and Forensic Centre.

The Mother and Child Hospital is in addition to the one in Akure, which was established during the first tenure of the Mimiko administration for the take off of the Safe Motherhood programme of the government.

The village, according to the Chief Press Secretary to the governor, Eni Akinsola, was “borne out of the desire to make specialized health care services readily available to the citizens of the state where they live, work and play, and also to provide world class, tertiary specialized surgical and emergency care which adheres to the best international practices within an integrated health care system.

For instance the Trauma and Surgical Centre located within the Medical Village is a rapidly evolving surgical specialty based centre aimed at providing world-class tertiary comprehensive surgical services to the people of the state. It is about 4 kilometers from the state capital and 116 kilometers from Benin.

The centre which commenced operations in 2013 has the following specialties: orthopedic and trauma, plastic surgery, ear, nose and throat (ENT), anaesthesia and general surgery. Statistics showed that the centre in the last three years has carried out 3000 surgeries. This covered general surgery, burns, plastics and reconstructive surgery, orthopedics and trauma, neurologic surgery, paediatric surgery, otorhinolaryngology, anaesthesia, physiotherapy and radio diagnosis.

The centre also runs “out-patient surgical services and offer patients   elective day-cases surgeries with efficient in-patient care, including oncology, endocrine, hepatobiliary, breast surgery, a special burn centre and intensive care.”

The centre according to a report on the activities, serves as referral area for mainly hospitals in the state and its environs. It liaise with Kidney Centre and Mother and Child Hospital to provide total health care delivery for the people of the state

To compliment its health care delivery system, the government also set up Ondo State Emergency Medical Services Agency (ODEMSA). It has the mandate to provide emergency rescue, pre-hospital and hospital services to road crash victims in the state. Five fully functional accident rescue stations along the highways across the state were built. They are located at Ore, Bolorunduro, Ilara, Owo and Oka-Akoko.

Also, 100 extricators and 100 paramedics work 24 hours in all the stations and the response time to accident scenes is 15 minutes. Each station has an advanced life support vehicle equipped with oxygen and other essentials needed to sustain victims while they are being conveyed to hospital or trauma centre.

The kidney centre, established in 2013 upholds three tiers of kidney care. They are: primary prevention of chronic kidney disease, secondary prevention and tertiary care. The primary has to do with awareness drive and screening exercise while secondary is the running of a consultant unit, out-patient care, in-patient care, emergency care, dialysis and kidney transplant. It also manages kidney related disorders.

For the tertiary care, the centre carries research into factors that promote chronic kidney disease. “The running of the kidney care centre is premised upon the National Kidney Foundation guideline of team work in the care of the kidney patient. Hence, the kidney centre has a standing renal team comprising of the nephrologist, dialysis/ transplant nurses, renal dieticians, clinical psychologist, social workers and the dialysis technicians.

In the last two years, Akinsola said the Centre has recorded many achievements including being the first Centre in Africa to discover and report rare coexistence of lupus nephritis and autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease through its research drive. It is also the second largest dialysis Centre in the country including producing the first renal dietician in the country.

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