Coronavirus lessons learnt the hard way – Okowa

Governor Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta State at the 40th annual general meeting of the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) at the main auditorium of the Delta State University Teaching Hospital, Oghara, emphasized that coronavirus made governments learn lessons the hard way in managing health facilities in the country. The governor maintained that coronavirus outbreak provided opportunities to improve and develop health infrastructure in countries of the world and increase manpower in the health sector that can contain outbreak of such infectious diseases in the future.

Participants at the annual meeting observed one minute of silence in memory of health workers who died performing their duty during the coronavirus outbreak.

The Governor advocated the need for institutionalized national policy on responding and managing outbreaks in the public health system in addition to adopting and implementing a viable and sustainable healthcare financing programme for all states. He said these are two crucial lessons learnt from the Covid-19 pandemic

Okowa disclosed that Delta State government has accredited 405 health facilities which include 268 primary healthcare centers, 66 secondary and 65 private healthcare facilities, one federal medical center, three Abuja and two Lagos healthcare facilities to operate the schemes, with close to 79,000 enrollees.

The governor added that the state government has agreed to fund 80% of the training requirements of the residency training act of 2017 reached by the NARD and DELSUTH.

It was gathered that two former governors of the state, James Ibori and Emmanuel Uduaghan, were present and acknowledged  the success stories of policy continuity in DELSUTH.