The Delta State Government on Friday announced plans to upgrade facilities at the Delta University Teaching Hospital, Oghara to handle kidney transplant.
The state’s Commissioner for Health, Dr. Nicholas Azinge, made the disclosure
when members of the Kidney Care Association, Delta State chapter paid him a courtesy visit in Asaba.
Azinge said Governor Ifeanyi Okowa, being a medical doctor, was concerned about meeting his campaign promise of providing quality healthcare services to Delta State people.
The commissioner assured the people of the state government’s determination
“to return DELSUTH to those glorious days when it successfully carried out kidney transplants on patients”.
He regretted cases of deaths due to inability to carry out kidney transplant and procure medicines, stressing that the state government was committed to addressing the problem.
Azinge said sensitisation and enlightenment campaigns were vital in checking the rise of kidney-related diseases, saying the state’s Ministry of Health would partner with the Association to educate citizens.
He called for more coordinated disease screening activities for better coverage, adding that screening for possible kidney disease would be given prompt attention like screening for high blood pressure.
Earlier, the state Chairman of Kidney Care Association, Pastor Robinson Odega, had enumerated some of the aims and objectives of the group, among them, the creation of forum to know each other.
He said the association aimed to create awareness and enlighten the public on the need for healthy lifestyle to prevent kidney disease and failure.
According to him, the association equally aims to create data bank which will
help government to know and possibly assist kidney patients, among others.
The chairman said the association decided to visit the commissioner to intimate the state government on their plight and challenges facing it.
He lamented the huge financial burden members face in sourcing for funds to maintain their transplanted kidneys, which he said had become too heavy for their immediate families to bear.
Odega said the cost of medication became unbearable due to high cost of purchasing dollars in the Nigerian money market, stressing that “it cost nothing less than N2.5
million to sustain a kidney patient for a year”.
He further revealed that the association had before now been able to educate the public through radio and television campaigns on the need to adopt healthy lifestyles to prevent the disease.
He pleaded with the state government to extend to the association, the privileges it gave to patients with HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and other diseases through provision of free drugs.
He noted that in the past, the state government used to assist kidney patients financially while travelling for medical checkup and the purchase of their drugs and therefore pleaded for government’s intervention to help alleviate their plight.