The Chief Medical Director (CMD) of Chukwuemeka Odimegwu Ojukwu University Teaching Hospital Amaku Awka, Dr Joe Akabuike, has disclosed that the teaching hospital spends between 7 and 8 Million Naira every month to meet the demands of the hospital.

Akabuike who disclosed this at the state assembly complex Awka shortly after budget bilateral talks with the House of Assembly Committee on Health, stated that there are machines and equipment requiring constant electricity supply to function effectively and the hospital could not rely on the Enugu Electricity Distribution Company especially as the hospital deals mostly with emergency situations.

The CMD said the hospital bought a litre of diesel at N800 and that some of the machines consumed almost a drum of diesel to function effectively. He also stated that there was need to upgrade most of the structures in the teaching hospital and that through what he described as Reverse Medical Tourism, Ndi-Anambra in the diaspora could partner government in the provision of some of the machines required to perform certain operations.

Akabuike emphasized that it is not to buy rice for people during Christmas and thereafter they will die; that the basic thing was to prolong the lives of the people through quality healthcare services. Those well-to-do individuals should come and adopt buildings in the teaching hospital in order to have more structures on the ground and with his vast experience and expertise, he will get people to make the structures operational.

Akabuike who disclosed that he was the initiator of primary healthcare services in Anambra state as he stated that he met what he termed vertical and horizontal fragmentations and total collapse of primary healthcare services; but adopted the primary healthcare under one roof which he said later metamorphosed into what is now known as Anambra State Primary Healthcare Development Agency.

According to the CMD, Anambra started with 63 primary healthcare centres under his watch as the Commissioner for Health and equally introduced the Keke Ambulance but he was worried that the PHCs were not spreading the way they should in the present circumstance.

He said currently the primary healthcare centres were not functioning the way they should but he believes that what is needed is a sustained effort to make the sector work. That the PHCs could be scaled up from 63 to 200 and above, stressing that the present administration is determined to provide solutions to issues concerning primary healthcare and the health sector in general.

Dr. Akabuike also stated that the teaching hospital has been able to access only 40 Million Naira out of the 700 Million Naira approved for the institution. He said the hospital needed structures like dental unit, residence for doctors on call, a dialysis centre and a host of other departments to surmount her structural challenges.

The CMD further disclosed that Chukwuemeka Odimegwu Ojukwu University Teaching Hospital Amaku Awka was started as a general hospital in 1957 and that most of the buildings have become old and dilapidated and needed to be replaced with new structures while appealing for improvements in the area of fund release to the hospital as it has been a major challenge. (Saturday Independent)

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