Borno State Government has taken stock of ultra modern hospital equipment worth N3.2 billion to address health facilities and challenges of residents.
Governor Kashim Shettima while inspecting the delivery of the equipment at the State Specialist Hospital Maiduguri yesterday evening said the equipment include Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machines, CT Scan machine, 44 Ultra Sound machines and Mammogram machines as well as some of the newly installed machines.
As a result of the over 9 years Boko Haram insurgency, the Borno State health sector has been confronted with many medical and health challenges ranging from health facilities destruction and hospital equipment to manpower overstretched informed the governments decision to procure new hospital equipments to meet the health needs of the people.
Speaking on Monday at the State Specialist Hospital Maiduguri, Shettima said his government was prioritising the health needs of the people, saying, ” no amount will be too much to provide affordable healthcare to the people.”
He noted that there was no politics greater than the contentment of the masses if the people can get the medical and health delivery services from the ultra modern health facilities.
” Some of the equipment is the best of their kind in the whole Nation, one of the equipment – MRI is 1.5 Tesla, even that of the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital is 0.2 Tesla.
” I believe the people of Borno will reap the more bountiful harvest in the years to come and in the next couple of weeks, this place will be ready for commissioning by Mr President. ” Shettima said.
However, Shettima lamented at the dearth of medical personnel and hospital equipment in the North East sub region explained that his government had entered into a partnership with General Electric with a view of acquiring a quality hospital equipment at a lesser cost.
” If we were to procure these facilities from the open market, we would have been spending N6 to N7 billion.
“But we deliberately , out of transparency entered into a direct government to company transaction with General Electric; where we invested about N3.2 billion for the installation of MRI, CT Scan machine, 44 Ultra Sound machine machines, Mammogram machines all in an effort to address the health Challenges of our State and the North East as a whole.”
Governor Shettima disclosed that Alhaji Abdulkabir Aliyu Foundation who is also the owner of Matrix Energy built a Kidney Dialysis Centre and installed 10 State of the art Kidney dialysis machines as part of his corporate social responsibility.
He appealed to good of Borno state to emulate the gesture of Alhaji Aliyu as he promised that the kidney centre will run for free.
” People will not be charged a dime to have access to the facilities of the kidney centre, because we are facing a lot of kidney ailments and our people are poor but we have a moral obligation to support them in whatever way we can towards addressing their health challenges ” Shettima said.
