NOT fewer than 77 patents who are suffering from different ailments have undergone surgery in Bauchi state under the free medical treatments provided by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara in his determination to provide health care to the less privileged in the society.
This was disclosed by the Team Leader of the exercise, Dr. Joseph Haruna Kigbu while addressing Journalists at the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa Teaching Hospital (ATBUTH) Bauchi on Wednesday explaining that the exercise is the third phase of the medical outreach carried out by Speaker Yakubu Dogara in the state.
Haruna Kigbu stated that “in this third medical outreach, our projection is to be able to see 10,000 patients at the end of the programme. The Programme will be run for 5 days which is from Monday 19th of March to Friday 23rd of March and in the last 3 days we have given out over 4,500 cards to patients.
The Team Leader added that “Similar programme was conducted by the Speaker last year where over 2000 patents were screened for various illness and 430 cataracts surgery were carried out also last month over 1,000 patents also benefited from the outreach”.
According to Dr Haruna Kigbu, some of the patents who underwent surgery had goiters, which is a swollen neck disease adding, “we operated 4 goiter patients, each of these surgeries, if it were to be done in a private hospitals, they will have to pay between N1m to N1.5 million but the surgery was done free of charge. Also, some women who have evidence of cancer in their wombs were operated. We quickly remove it because they have had sufficient children so we go ahead to remove the uterus so that they don’t develop full blood cancer, we did 6 of these surgeries and also did fibroid surgeries.”
On the situation at the eye centre, Dr Haruna Kigbu said that “we had some logistic issues, but they were able to do 28 cataract operation but they have recruited 190 patents. The last month outreach we did 247 cataract operation successfully, these are Nigerians that are blind because of cataract, today they can see, they have become economically viable, they are useful to themselves, to the community and they can contribute their quota to Nigeria because they can now see, they can go back to their farms, trade and be useful to their families.”
He added that “presently, we are working with goitre surgeons, people who specialize in fixing goitres problem, this is a very delicate operation. We have Obstetricians and Gynecologists, we have Neurologists and Paediatric Surgeons working in different units. The Speaker brings in expert doctors to offer quality health care in the urban and rural areas”.
“Yakubu Dogara is passionate about the health care of people of Bauchi state and Nigeria as a whole. This is the third round of The Speaker Dogara Free Health treatment. We were here last year, last month and this month,” he explained.
The Team leader also said that for the third phase for Bauchi town alone, “We have also gone to other centres like Federal medical centre Azare and the comprehensive health centre built and furnished by the Speaker at Bogoro Local Government of Bauchi state.”
“We are in partnership to offer care and fill the gap in the health care system of Nigeria. The National Health Insurance Scheme has not been able to capture all Nigerians and so this kind of assistance becomes inevitable to the yearning of the many sick in our local community” Haruna Kigbu pointed out.
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