By Abdullahi Bego
The healthcare sector in Yobe State has been on the limelight for all the good reasons for the best part of five years. It started in 2013 when Governor Ibrahim Gaidam declared a ‘State of Emergency’ in the sector in response to previous, widespread, and unacceptable dysfunctions.
On a visit to the State Specialist Hospital in Damaturu in April 2013, the governor was so appalled at the state of facilities and the state of service delivery that he immediately summoned sector officials to express his disgust. “What I have seen today is unacceptable. In Yobe State, the public must have access to quality and affordable basic care in our hospitals. Since this is not the case right now, I am declaring a state of emergency in healthcare throughout the state. We are going to reform and rebuild the sector from the ground up and all of you who are managers and professionals in the sector must key in to this”, he said.
And so, a process began that is still ongoing but that has so far transformed a sector so vital to the life and wellbeing of everyday people. From the total rehabilitation and expansion of the major hospitals in Damaturu, Potiskum, Gashu’a and Gaidam towns to the installation of equipment – some of which is still ongoing – Yobe’s healthcare sector is now donning a new look.
The icing on the cake, of course, is the construction of a new teaching hospital and a new college of medical sciences to improve tertiary healthcare and incentivise the production of Yobe’s own corps of medical doctors and professionals who will consolidate on the gains in the sector going forward.
What’s even more significant, at the moment at least, is the recruitment by the Gaidam administration of over 600 professors, consultants, medical officers, and professionals in specialities such as nursing, medical laboratory science, pharmacy, radiography, physiotherapy, etc. to immediately assume service delivery at the new Yobe State University Teaching Hospital (YSUTH) and provide academic instructions at the new College of Medical Sciences, a measure that has already begun to bear fruit.
With construction work and installation of equipment and furniture complete, the College of Medical Sciences is poised to begin admitting its maiden set of medical students this year.
The hospitals in Gashu’a, Gaidam and Potiskum, with their renovation works complete (in the case of Gaidam) or nearing completion (in the case of Gashu’a and Potiskum), are also poised to roll out full and optimised medical services within the year with the new medical equipment procured for them already having been delivered.
All these are markers of progress in Yobe’s secondary and tertiary healthcare. But primary healthcare, which is so vitally important, is meaningfully ascendant as well.
With the ongoing collaboration and inter-operation with the Bill and Melinda Gates and Dangote Foundations, WHO, UNICEF, DFID, and other such partner organisations, Yobe’s made significant progress in containing polio, diphteria and other child killer diseases and has demonstrably reduced the hitherto high mortality and morbidity rates for pregnant women, children and the new-born.
It is the totality of these efforts – by the Yobe State Government under Governor Gaidam – that has attracted the attention of the leadership of the Nigeria Medical Association. Under its outgoing president, Prof. Mike Ogrima, the NMA was on ground in Yobe State to see, assess and confirm. And they did see, assessed and confirmed.
The NMA leadership saw that even in the midst of tight security and fiscal challenges, Governor Gaidam had gone over and beyond the call of duty to make Yobe’s healthcare sector work for its people. They saw that his commitment to public welfare and a healthy society is demonstrable and has not been precedented in the state. They saw that the ‘marvellous’ progress made so far, as Prof. Ogrima has described it, needs to be heralded so the world knows that Governor Gaidam is achieving. And so, in their 58th Annual Delegates Meeting and Scientific Conference, they honoured the governor by calling out his achievements in the healthcare sector.
There were precedents to this. Back in November 2017, the Society of Gynaecology and Obstetrics of Nigeria (SOGON), in its annual delegates conference held in Sokoto, had conferred an honourary membership of the Society on Governor Gaidam for his effort in “improving the health of women and children” in Yobe State.
SOGON lauded the governor for his administration’s free drugs policy for pregnant women and children from 0 to 5 years and commended his effort at turning around the healthcare sector during an ongoing security crisis.
Weeks after SOGON, the Yobe State Council of the NMA did its own event in the Yobe State capital and used the occasion to honour the governor for what he is doing to improve the objective conditions under which its members work.
Indeed, the garlands for Gaidam’s healthcare effort came even from beyond the shores of the country. In Sudan last week, a women-only university, called al-Ahfad University for Women based in Omdurman, had also recognised the governor with an honourary doctorate in law for advancing education, and women education, and doing so much to improve the health of women in Yobe State.
With Governor Gaidam’s effort so far and all that is still underway, it may not be stretching Yobe’s luck too much to say that in the coming period, the state is poised to become a hub for medical care in the northeast and a destination of choice for people across the country who are looking to access quality and affordable medical services.
Bego, Director-General for Media Affairs to Governor Gaidam, wrote in from Damaturu Yobe State.
