The Edo State Governor, Godwin Obaseki on Wednesday said he has no regrets demolishing the Central Hospital building in Benin City for the construction of Museum of West African Art, MOWAA.
Obaseki made the disclosure at the commissioning of the remodelled Edo State College of Health Sciences and Technology, EDOCOHEST, Benin City.
He said in place of the demolished Central Hospital over 10 primary health centres have been constructed serving the citizens of the State.
According to him, it was COVID-19 that opened my eye to the state of healthcare in Edo State and Nigeria and what made me scared about COVID-19 was not the disease itself but our inability to respond to the pandemic.
“I was with a friend during COVID-19 and I said if something happened now, we can’t leave Nigeria with all the wealth and the planes that we have for treatment.
“The lesson I learned from COVID-19 is that we must build our own healthcare system and healthcare is not only about hospital, infrastructure not just the infrastructure you see when you are sick. Healthcare is a system.
“The most important thing in any healthcare system are the people who must be trained to deliver services to you.
“So, COVID-19, as I said opened my eyes. Our school of Science and Nurses have been closed down. No accreditation. Our school of Health technology was also closed down. And no accreditation. How are we therefore employing people to work in our hospitals?
“Then, we said we have Central hospital where everybody in Benin will go to. One place. In 2020 every morning during COVID-19, I will wake up and we had a meeting at 9 am. Sometimes, I asked them how many people died yesterday they will not know.
“That was the motivation for me to say by the grace of God if God make me survive COVID-19, I will make sure that I will refurbish and revive all health institutions in Edo State.
“I had to bring down Central Hospital and I have no regrets bringing it down”, he said.
Obaseki stated that his administration also built Oredo PHCs, as well as those of Amagba and Evbuotobu to take care of the citizens
While noting that there are 192 political wards in the state, he added that his policy was that there must be a minimum of one health centre in each of the ward.
He said, the development was to ensure that patients do not have to travel far or spend more than 15 to 20 minutes before getting to a healthcare centre for treatment.
“With the almost 200 wards in Edo, and if we have to employ an average of 101 health workers in a primary health center, we need minimum of 2000, and where do we have to train them nowhere.
“In Nigeria we need over 250,000 health workers for our primary healthcare system. To develop any system whether it is health or agriculture, the focus is on the middle level manpower”, he added.
Recall that the Central Hospital popularly referred to Specialist Hospital was demolished by the Governor Obaseki in 2022.
