By Thompson ABISOLA
The Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewale, on Monday in Benin said revamping the comatose Primary Health Care (PHC) centres across the country would help strengthen and develop the troubled nation’s healthcare system.
Isaac, who said this in a keynote address at the Edo 2018 Alagodaro Summit, pledged the Federal Government’s commitment in ensuring Edo achieved her aim of having 200 PHCs by year 2020.
While stressing the importance of PHCs in the health sector, the minister decried that their non-functional status had overstretched the general and teaching hospitals originally programmed to handle complicated ailments.
While he advised government to revamp PHCs nationwide, “attention must also be paid to preventive medicines, especially on provision of safe water in communities and sensitisation on proper hygiene’’.
He also drew attention to the explosion of the country’s population especially “as majority of the population falls below the working age‘’.
Isaac congratulated the Edo government having the highest rate of skilled birth attendants which he said had reduced the rate of maternal and infant deaths in the state.
Prof. Omokhua Adeleye, in his contribution to the conversation with the theme “Revamping Primary Health Care in Edo State’’, called for an all inclusive health insurance coverage to make health care accessable to rural communities.
Adeleye advocated for a functional emergency system in the health sector.
The state Commissioner for Health, Dr David Osifo, said the government had trained no fewer than 200 nurses for the 20 pilot PHCs.
Osifo added that there were currently 496 government PHCs with majority of them in dilapidated condition, saying that government will reconstruct about 200 of them by 2020.
