Ugwuanyi inaugurates South-East committee on health

Enugu State Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi yesterday inaugurated the South-East Consultative Committee on Health (SECCH) and charged the members to discharge their responsibilities successfully.

Inaugurating the 12-member committee at the Government House, Enugu, Ugwuanyi, represented by his deputy, Mrs. Cecilia Ezeilo, said it should serve as a medium for grassroots mobilisation and information dissemination on the guidelines for achieving improved healthcare and social well-being of the entire people of the zone.
He outlined the committee’s terms of reference as: to harmonise and facilitate the fruitful and productive co-ordination of all health-related activities in any or all the states within the zone, among others.

The governor added that the committee would mobilise and strengthen traditional and religious and community-based institutions for health outcome improvement through the promotion of a sustained positive health-seeking behaviour of residents of the zone.The committee has Prof. Frank Ezugwu as chairman, and Chinedu Ezemuoh as Secretary while all the commissioners of health in the five states of the zone are members.

Other members include the Catholic Bishop of Enugu Diocese, Rev. (Dr.) Callistus Onaga, Prof. (Mrs.) Adaobi Obasi, His Royal Highness Igwe Alex Onyido, among others.But responding on behalf of the committee members, its chairman, Prof. Frank Ezugwu, who responded on behalf of the committee members, said the task before the committee was quite “enormous and challenging”, but added that “with our collective resolve, we will be able to surmount them.”

“We know the issues about health generally in the country – poor data, basic statistics, poor health-seeking attitude, non-availability of things to work with and so on. However, “we will use our God-given knowledge and energy to see if we can harness whatever assistance, both internally-generated and externally-generated, to improve the health of the people,” he said.He said the committee needed the governors’ “complete support and co-operation” to enable it perform its challenging responsibilities.