By:ABUBAKAR AHMADU MAISHANU, Dutse
Jigawa State Commissioner of Health, Dr. Abba Umar Zakari has said, the Ministry has employed 540 health workers from the money it sourced through Monthly verification exercise targeted to fish out ghost health Personnel from government payroll and paid arrears of over N45million to Nurses .
Dr. Abba Umar made the disclosure while speaking to the our reporter over the weekend, where he stated that the ongoing health workers verification exercise blocks the leakage of over N700million last year and one to four million naira Monthly in this 2017 since the commencement of the exercise from inception of the present administration to date.
He explained that,when “we came on board, despite economic instability , the frugality and prudence means of administration embark upon by the present administration makes them to saved money for the system thereby constructed 87 primary health care centres in the state and moving forward to compliment the policy of federal government to built at least one functional primary health care centre in each of the 278 political wards in the state”.
“we also acquired the accreditation for school of midwifery Birnin Kudu after continuing with uncompleted Birnin Kudu general hospital project which we inherited at 19% progress, and a blueprint has been obtained on the establishing another specialist hospitals in Hadejia, Kazaure and Babura school of Nursing and midwifery after successful upgrading Birniwa cottage hospital to general hospital.”
The Commissioner further lamented over the poor indices rating in the state when they came-in which according to him, Mal- nutrition was about 62% which is the highest in the country and percentage of delivery in health facilities was about 6.7% the north west average was 11.5% while the national average was 60.6%.
“maternal mortality ratio was 950 per 100.000 life birth, National average was 576. Measles coverage was 9% in the north west average was 22.3% while National average was 42.1%”
Zakari further highlighted that,” delivery by Skills birth attendant was 7.6% north west average was 12.3% while national rating was 38.1% and infant mortality rate was about 89 per thousand life birth.
Dr. Abba also said that, after tour of assessment to various health facilities in the state they found that, the system need to be overhaul to meet standard in conformity to the present times challenges..
“We realigned the state health system with national health system which override the existing Gunduma health system with the primary health care agency in accordance to the National health act which saw the establishment of local government primary health care in the 27 local government and refurbished the state ministry of health to aligned with scheme of Service and began the hospital reform process.”
Dr. Abba Umar further explained that, they constructed Nursing quarters at various localities to improve the living standard of health Personnel’s , and renovated a numbers of health facilities at Maigatari, Roni, Ringim, Gumel, Jahun, Kanya Babba, Fagam and Ebola isolation centre at Rasheed Shekoni hospital at Dutse while others are ongoing in the nooks and cronies of the state.
In addressing the shortage of Man Power Development, Dr. Abba said 60 students were sent to China to study medicines and the state is expecting the return of 50 medical students from Egypt in the first quarter of next year, and currently we have over two hundred students studying various field of medicines across the country.
