ANAMBRA STATE GOVT DISBURSES OVER #288 MILLION TO FAITH BASED HOSPITALS
Reporter : ONYINYE CHIJIOBI
Anambra State Government has disbursed two hundred and eighty-eight million, five hundred thousand naira to faith based hospitals in the area.
Disbursing the grants to the benefitting hospitals at Dora Akuyili Women Development Center Awka, Governor Willie Obiano explained that grants given to them were to make health affordable for the people.
Governor Obiano while giving breakdown of the grants, explained that 197,700,000.00
(one hundred and ninety-seven million, seven hundred thousand naira) would be given to the Catholic hospitals, 60,000,000.00; (sixty million naira) to the Anglican owned hospital while 30,000,000.00 (thirty 30 million naira) to the pentecostal hospitals.
He said that about 69 faith based hospitals were recognized by government for the assistance to the health care needs of the people.
The governor noted that his administration had employed qualified health practitioners and distributed over 468 Keke ambulances to primary health care facilities in the area.
He lammented that some people were bent on patronizing quacks rather than go to hospitals for quality health care.
Governor Obiano while urging the people to always wear their face masks, said that there were enough doses of COVID-19 jab for those who had not taken the first shot.
The Commissioner for Health in the state, Dr. Vincent Okpala, explained that faith based hospitals contribute to the successes recorded in the health sector.
While enumarating the achievements the present administration recorded in the healthcare sector, Dr. Okpala maintained that the oxygen plant established years back yielded tremendous progress during the outbreak of Corona virus in Nigeria.
He noted that the faith based hospitals assisted government during the outbreak of COVID-19 by attending the patients with fear of contracting the virus.
Representatives of some of the benefiting hospitals, who spoke with Radio Nigeria, promised to use the grants judiciously.