Yobe State Government Provides Over 50,000 Free Dialysis Sessions in 7 Years
Governor Mai Mala Buni of Yobe State has made a significant impact on healthcare by sponsoring over 50,000 free dialysis sessions for patients suffering from renal diseases over the past seven years.
Dr. Baba Goni, the Chief Medical Director of Yobe Teaching Hospital in Damaturu, revealed this during a recent tour of the newly completed Maternal, New-born, and Child Healthcare Complex.
Dr. Goni, who toured the journalists through the newly completed Maternal, Newborn, and Child Healthcare Complex, said over 600 free dialysis sessions were being conducted monthly in the hospital.
He said each session cost about N50,000, due to the exorbitant prices of consumables.
Dr. Goni said the Buni administration also set up a dialysis centre in the hospital, to attend to the high burden of kidney failure in the state, particularly among communities on the fringes of the River Yobe.
The governor, he said, increased the standing payment for hemodialysis by 100 percent to provide succour to indigent patients.
Goni said the state government was also providing free vascular access operations, a preliminary process for dialysis, which cost between N100,000 and N150,000 per session.
He recalled that Buni, during a visit to the United Kingdom in 2023, invited world renowned experts to help the state identify the remote and immediate causes of the high manifestation of renal diseases in the state.
“We have already done preliminary work on that, and we have carried out a survey and identified hot spots in some local government areas in the northern part of the state.
“Soon we are going to conduct a population-based survey in the hot spots. We will analyse blood samples of members of the communities, the soil and water they consume to see if there are toxins that can affect kidneys,” he said.
According to him, the state government is working in partnership with the Urology/Nephrology Centre, Mansoura University, Egypt, to train doctors in Yobe on kidney transplanting.
He said that kidney transplants locally would save money as the expenditure for the procedure abroad exceeded N20 million, adding that the 400-bed capacity maternal, new-born, and child healthcare complex built by the Buni administration was the biggest in the North-East.
Dr. Goni said that the facility would address the high rate of under-five mortality triggered by the mass exodus of health personnel due to the decade-long insurgency in the state.
According to him, the facility is designed on the tripod of service delivery, manpower training, and research on prevailing health challenges in the subregion.
Buni, in 2020, was awarded a N1.6 billion contract for the construction of the state-of-the-art facility.
