Kogi seeks public, private co-operation on physically challenged persons

Kogi State Government has canvassed public and private sectors’ co-operation to address the welfare of physically challenged persons.

Governor Idris Wada, who spoke through the permanent secretary in the ministry of health Mr. S. O Aliyu during the opening ceremony of ‘Team 13’ Free Cleft and Facial Deformity Surgery Program at the Kogi State Specialist hospital sponsored by the foundation in partnership with the Kogi State Government, said that Kogi is the only state that has keyed into this collaborative effort with the foundation to help the people.

Aliyu went down memory lane to recall when the foundation met with the State Government last year to propose a collaboration method bearing in mind the free rural ‎medical services that have been in place since the beginning of the Wada administration.

“The governor did not hesitate to key into this programme. That is why in 2014 the foundation was here to carry out similar exercise.”

He said he was reliably informed that by then they operated 46 patients out of 63 that were registered adding that at the moment he is aware that many new patients have been registered.

“Their coming to Kogi State was to come and complete the left over of last only to discover that many more new cases are still coming. “The State Government is very much alive to its responsibility and that is why it has taken this bold step to ensure that quality health services, affordable, available and accessible health care services are given to the citizens.”

The permanent secretary indicated that the Government has done a lot in the health sector of the State even as he enumerated their achievements to include the renovation of zonal and general hospitals, the establishment of the Kogi State University Teaching Hospital at Anyigba, and even the construction of the permanent site of the teaching hospital is steadily progressing.

Others according to him include, the upgrading of the college of Nursing Orange development and the college of health Technology Idah to Higher National Diploma awarding institutions.

“Our immunisations programs earned the State government an award and for which the State came first at the North Central and third overall in the entire country in 2012 and so many others. New General Hospitals and Cottage Hospitals are under construction.