Within the ambit and stream of an audacious simulation and execution of holistic infrastructural development in Anambra state, Professor Charles Chukwuna Soludo’s administration has sequentially entered the reformative stage of healthcare for health security through avant-garde domestication of United States’ Medicare and Medicaid.
Navigating this very important sector has also become pro-people governance that would be indelible in the annals of democracy and real-politics in the South-East. Why and what for? Good health is life and wealth, for it is the source, strength and life-wire of excellence, productivity and wealth of private and public entrepreneurs. This is an eloquent end of the road for perennial dearth of hospitals, doctors. medical professionals and equipments and healthcare in the state.
The drive to revolutionise the healthcare is a tangible rhythm that has ushered in approximately 1000 skilled medical personnel to confront health challenges of diverse natures. The government of Anambra state’s values of life and health of the people is driving Health security to logical ends with actions needed to prevent and respond to acute threats that could endanger people’s health across communities, sexes, old and young, classes, rural and urban. The vision, no doubt, is driven by Medicare infrastructure and programme for the aged and people with certain disabilities as well as a Medicaid concept that revolutionises health care coverage for low-income families in Anambra state.
Healthcare professionals and resources are not rentable but renewable and sustainable agencies for the well being of the society of people. This has been taken into cognizance in the launch by the state government of an array of formidable cadre of healthcare experts who now oversees the operation of government healthcare facilities.
The healthcare solution, an extended medical attention that caters for the health of the less privileged within which women morbidities and fatalities have come under the cynosure of the Governor. Expectant mother’s survival rate is now high given the facilities of Medicaid available that guarantees the gift of life without social classification and burdensome costs.
Free antenatal care and delivery services as Medicaid are now available to pregnant women of different classes at government hospitals and health centres across the state, fostering a culture of maternal care. Women’s health is therefore the strategy focus of Soludo administration in establishing 30 cervical cancer screening centers for early detection, counseling, prevention and cure throughout Anambra’s communities.
The Anambra State Health care think tank has achieved rapprochement in the existed gaps between the pharmaceutical/ pharmacological and the medical and so sought equity and justice in the infrastructural needs of these important segments of healthcare for health security in the state. The administration, therefore, has inaugurated a cutting-edge Drugs Quality Control Lab at COOUTH, Amaku, to bridge the infrastructural needs and supplies to the center of excellence in health management.
The necessary and sufficient condition for the smooth running of quality health administration is the establishment of a Medical Oxygen Production Plant and an Endoscopy unit at General Hospital, Onitsha and the deployment of Hematology Analysers to the laboratory departments of General Hospitals in Agulu and Nnobi.
The health care sector is being elevated to a level of synergy and synchrony that underscores the administration’s commitment to advanced medical, pharmaceutical and diagnostics regime in the state.
Even as transformation of the state’s healthcare goes on, the administration is committed to having this health security manifest and spread out to all the three senatorial zones, hence the renovations and modernisations are carried out at the three General Hospitals in Umueri, Ekwulobia, and Enugu-Ukwu, located at Anambra North, South and central senatorial zones respectively.
Ancillary to all the these state-of-the-art hospitals are also state- of- the-art dental units which are to complement healthcare facilities and the needs of the populace. All these innovations have been solidified by the State Emergency Medical Services and Ambulance Systems (SEMAS) which stand by as sentinels and rapid response unit in times of medical emergencies.
The levels of achievements in healthcare and health security infrastructures and services could not have been without equivalent and conducive pillars – security, law and order as well as economic transformation, human capital development, governance reforms, and the creation of a sustainable environment, road construction and electricity supply for economic rejuvenation.
Prof. Dukor is the Editor-in-Chief / President of Essence Library (Cultural and Scientific Department Centre), Department of Philosophy, UNIZIK.
