Reps move against poor state of health in prisons

By Joshua Egbodo
Abuja

House of Representatives has moved to address the deplorable state of health in prisons across the country, as it yesterday mandated its committees on Interior, and Healthcare Services to probe the matter with a view to finding a permanent solution to the problem.
The House, which in a resolution, also directed the joint committee to report back its findings within three weeks, and further urged the Federal Ministries of Interior, and Health, as well as the Comptroller General of Prisons to intervene by providing quality healthcare services for prison inmates.

This was sequel to the adoption of a motion on the “need to Address the Deplorable State of Health Care Service Provision in Nigerian Prisons,” sponsored by Hon. Chike Okafor, who stressed that inmates are still entitled to their fundamental human rights to quality healthcare services, even while in prison as envisaged by Prisons Act.
He said “the deplorable state of the nation’s prisons which have impacted negatively on healthcare service delivery in the prisons as manifested in non-availability of drugs and inadequacy of medical personnel, has resulted in avoidable deaths of inmates.”

He said “owing to the comatose nature of prisons clinics, inmates now depend on donations and outreach programmes from churches, mosques and other voluntary organisations to access healthcare as well as procure drugs, and at times, have to buy the drugs by themselves from vendors at the risk of buying fake, substandard or adulterated drugs.”
The lawmaker further argued that it was of great concern, “the frequent outbreak of epidemics in the prisons and the high death rate recorded among inmates, which is evident in the over 32 inmate deaths recorded in 2016 at a Lagos prison owing to unavailability of quality medical care.”
To him, the situation “is a major public health hazard, which without intervention, could result in more deaths, amounting to unsolicited death sentence to prison inmates.”

Leave a Reply