Kogi State Government under Governor Yahaya Bello has procured Nigeria’s first Hyperbaric Oxygen Treatment, HBOT, Chamber to strengthen the state’s healthcare system and provide quality healthcare services.
The equipment is set to strengthen the critical institutions and systems required to effectively provide affordable and quality healthcare service to the people.
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In a statement, signed by the Commissioner for Health, Dr. Saka Haruna Audu in Lokoja, the state capital, the investment in the medical equipment is to offer an alternative at home to check the growing cases of medical tourism being embarked upon by Nigerians for medical treatment abroad.
Saka noted that, Nigeria is now the fifth country in Africa that can boast of such a sophisticated medical equipment as the Kogi State Government has broken the age-long jinx.
According to him, “This is great news for Nigerian patients who hitherto had to travel abroad for such treatments. Whoever has been following the trend of achievments in Kogi State Health Sector must have now seen the purposeful move to turn the State to a choice destination for Health tourism.
“This was made possible by the determination of His Excellency Alhaji Yahaya Bello, to revamp the State’s Health sector and change the old narrative of a moribund sector that supervised substandard services”.
The Health Commissioner described the newly acquired HBOT chamber as a very useful equipment that can help in treating people with both internal and external life threatening injuries as well as in health complications such as air or gas embolism, brain and sinus infections, necrotising soft tissue infections, arterial insufficiency or low blood flow in the arteries, radiation injury especially as a result of cancer treatment,
anaemia, osteomyelitis, gas gangrene, carbon monoxide poisoning, burns, skin grafts.
“HBOT is becoming increasingly popular and mostly used as adjuvant therapy to conventional treatment or management of some life threatening conditions to minimise healing times.” he added.
Also speaking to journalists in Lokoja, the State Commissioner for Information and Communications, Kingsley Fanwo said the newly acquired equipment is part of the many facilities to feed the ongoing Health Institution Constructions in the state.
“We are at advanced stages in our ongoing hospital projects across the state and we hope to equip them with what other hospitals don’t have in Nigeria. We want to make Kogi Heathcare Institutions serve the entire Nigeria.
“With the ravaging economic reality in our nation, we need to reduce the rate at which people travel abroad to access Medicare. Billions are wasted in foreign hospitals.
“It is the agenda of the Alhaji Yahaya Bello Administration to create such environment and provide such facilities in Nigeria. The administration has performed excellently in healthcare delivery and we hope to do more as many Nigerians are now migrating to our state.
“We are ready to provide infrastructure, including health infrastructure to meet the needs of the burgeoning population of the State”.
Fanwo assured the people that Kogi State will soon become the “centre of healthcare excellence”, insisting that Governor Yahaya Bello is already “creating the Nigeria of his dreams in Kogi State”.
(Editor: Terverr Tyav)
