By Modupe Gbadeyanka
Oyo State government has said that it is to flag off its free ambulance and mobile healthcare services as part of its holistic approach to ensuring a robust health care service in the state.
Commissioner for Health, Dr Azeez Adeduntan, stated this when he led the Oyo State Task Force on Private Health Facilities to monitor private hospitals and medical laboratories in Ibadan.
The task force had paid unscheduled visit to eight private hospitals in Ibadan South East and Ona Ara Local Government Areas of Ibadan. Many of the hospitals were not registered, filthy and improperly staffed.
According to him, “the mobile health services are to provide healthcare services to all zones of the state; it is also to ensure that people need not resort to quacks.”
Dr Adeduntan, who expressed displeasure on conditions of many of the hospitals visited, frowned at a middle aged uneducated woman that was found administering infusion fluid and some injectable drugs to a sick woman in an unregistered house and claiming the sick woman had low blood sugar.
He also expressed displeasure at a doctor with a mental condition also running a hospital, asking, “If a doctor with a mental condition is also taking care of people, how will the patient care be?”
The Commissioner, who reiterated that his office was filled with petitions on malpractices in many hospitals, stated that the government would not relent on sanitising and driving out all quacks in the health sector.
He added, this will continue “until people can feel safe to walk into any hospital to receive heath care”.
Dr Adeduntan, who announced that Oyo State was to launch a health care endowment fund to give a facelift to its hospitals, added “we are not going to give excuses; we will make sure that our hospitals become one of the best healthcare centres in Nigeria. We want to end medical tourism; that is one of the reasons why we are taking a holistic approach to provision of healthcare.”
He, however, pleaded that all private health facilities in the state be registered, and solicited cooperation of all healthcare professional bodies in fight against medical quackery.
