Gideon Arinze in Enugu
The Enugu of State Governor, Mr. Peter Mbah, has vowed that his administration would remain committed to delivering quality healthcare to all residents in the state.
Mbah said that his administration is in the process of constructing 260 Primary Healthcare Centers (PHCs) across all the electoral wards because it understands the importance of a healthy population and healthy workforce.
Mbah made this know at the weekend during an inspection tour of a PHC at Ogononoeji Ndiuno, Akpugo, Nkanu West LGA, where he also interacted with health workers and community leaders for the improvement of primary healthcare delivery.
During the inspection, Mbah said that healthcare was among the core priorities of his government, which expl–ained why the sector got the second highest allocation in the 2024 budget after education in the social services sector.
He said: “In that hierarchy of healthcare, we see the primary healthcare as the most important and that is why we undertook a thorough study of the challenges in the primary healthcare space to have reliable data to craft adequate strategy to address them.”
Mbah also explained that his administration is already addressing the state’s poor health workforce density while paying attention to secondary healthcare.
“As part of our strategies, we are upgrading our nursing schools to colleges so that we can have more intakes and have more nurses and community health extension workers trained to man our PHC facilities.”
Meanwhile, the Chief of Field Office, UNICEF, Enugu, Ms. Juliet Chiluwe, commended Mbah’s administration’s effort at improving healthcare and nutrition and pledged UNICEF’s continued support to the state government.
The Chairman of Nkanu West LGA, Hon. Uche Ejim, and a traditional ruler, Igwe Amushi Nwodo, who spoke on behalf of the 12 Akpugo communities expressed satisfaction with the determination of the Mbah’s administration to turn around the health sector in rural communities and pledged total support for his administration.
