By Ovat Abeng
Anambra State Government has warned the public to stop promoting quackery across the state.
The State Commissioner for Health, Dr. Afam Ben Obidike, who lay down the warning at a one-day capacity training of the Task-Force Team on hospital monitoring in Awka, on Wednesday, appealed to residents and the public at large to report any such sharp practices to the government.
The Commissioner emphasized that the training is geared toward improving healthcare and service delivery both in Public and Private Healthcare facilities across the 21 local government areas of the state.
According to Obidike, supervision is a way of ensuring and improving health workers competence and effectiveness through careful observation, discussion, guidance and support.
“What we are doing is not witch hunting but rather we want to ensure people receive quality of care as well as have trust in the healthcare system of the state.
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“Why we make this appeal is because the public knows those practicing quackery and their illegal hospitals so ours is to fish them out so as to save the lives of our people especially those in the rural areas.
“Report them to us, we promise not to reveal the identity of the person just like we have done in the past few months.
“It will interest you to know that we have sealed up many hospitals with quack which we don’t tolerate in the state because of the threat to lives.
“Majority of them are not medical personnel while some are secondary school dropouts, so we are intensifying our effort with this capacity training of people that will go out there to monitor activities in hospitals.’’
He said there will be continuous monitoring, strategic means of identifying quack and fake hospitals by next year and also leverage on the public reporting to us.
He said that next year the state will establish Anambra State Health Facility Monitoring Accreditation Unit where hospitals must have been given accreditation to operate.
“We must protect the health of people, so that they will not be victim when they are seeking for health care services.’’
Dr. Obidike explained that the healthcare system in Anambra has improved significantly under the good leadership of the State Governor, Prof. Chukwuma Soludo
“This is not just said by mouth, it is data driven, the attendance in hospitals has improved even four months ago, attendance in delivery services as of August this year was less than six hundred, this month we are getting one thousand, two hundred.
“Last two years when we did maternal review, there were some deaths but this year, since 3 months it was started, there is no maternal death recorded.
“With this, people should be more aware of their health, engage in exercises, currently we are partnering with the Healthy Living Initiative, a non-Governmental Organisation founded by the wife of the governor, Mrs Nonye Soludo, many years ago.
“Our reason for partnering with them is that they advocate for healthy lifestyles and natural foods which one can eat to stay healthy.
“So, generally accessibility to healthcare system has improved and quality of service delivery has also improved.’’
The facilitators, Dr. Charles Okafor and Dr. Geroge Ikpe lectured the participants on best practices as it relates to taskforce and inspection of hospitals.
It was gathered that the training organised by the Anambra State Government in collaboration with the National Agency for the Control of AIDS under Resilient and Sustainable System for Health has participants from the State Chapter of Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), Civil Society Organisation, Association of Private Medical Practitioners, Association of Optometrists and Health Workers, among others.
