From Seyi Tayese, Yenagoa
The second phase of Governor Douye Diri’s Medical Outreach as part of activities marking his Fifth Year anniversary in office took place on Saturday at Ekeremor Referral Hospital in Ekeremor Local Government Area of Bayelsa State to cover Bayelsa West Senatorial District.
The medical outreach, which started last Monday at Ikarama community in Yenagoa Local Government Area that covered Bayelsa Central Senatorial District, will terminate at Bayelsa East Senatorial District.
Speaking to journalists after the inspection of the health facilities, the commissioner of Health Prof. Brisibe said, they are doing this to encourage people that ordinarily find it difficult to access healthcare facilities for free medical care and also to get health commodities like nutritrent, immunization, and mosquitoes treated bed nets across the state .
The commissioner also said, again they are doing this in only hospital premises, saying the reason is that as they do this, “we believe that when people get sick, the first thing that will come to their minds is hospital so that is why we have this done .This is the second phase and it covers Ekeremor Local government and West Senatorial District”.
“The second part of this is the provision of surgical interventions, the focus is on surgical interventions and because we have a lot of them, they will not be able to complete it, that means the surgeons will have to come back Monday and Tuesday.
“We also have this message passed to all our health facilities in the state, therefore in the next one month, our surgeons we be going to hospitals in all the three Senatorial District, so that those that needs surgical interventions we have access to free medical treatment.
“Our intention is that by the end of this one month, we should be able to do about one hundred surgical interventions, here two have been operated upon and they still have about ten to take care of. What we are doing is to get healthcare to the grassroots that usually would not have have access to healthcare.
“Bayelsans should expect expansion of access to healthcare, equatable healthcare, the strengthening of our healthcare system to see that we are able to withstand public health emergency. Note that, our health facilities will work, providing quality health services that the uptick of facilities in the state are improve. There will be strategic upgrading of health facilities, our referral system will be strengthened and our tertiary institutions will be functional.
“When we commissioned the haemodialysis, the governor has given a marching order that the hospital must be functional within the next six months and I can tell you that when that center started running, it will be one of the best in the country, that is the easy, quality health services Bayelsans are expecting.
Prof. Brisibe said, the state have enough manpower to maned all the health facilities across the state, saying he was satisfied with the turnout.
In his contribution, the co- chairman of the outreach program, Dr. Nathaniel Apoku who is also the Technical Adviser on Infectious Diseases to the governor said, the second term of governor Douye Diri is anchor on Prosperity, saying they cannot talk of prosperity when the people are not healthy hence the governor deem it necessary to make sure the health of the people are paramount to his government.
He said this is to demonstrate that in bayelsa state there is healthcare system that is working efficiently and also free which is targeted at the people from the far remote areas of the state that ordinarily will not have the financial resources to go for medical treatment. “The system is more on those that have surgical cases so that they can be operated free for everybody”.
Some beneficiaries who went through medical operations thanked the governor for the free medical treatment.
