2011: Bayelsa To Build 32 Health Centres

Bayelsa State Government says 32 new health centres have been slated for completion and inauguration in 2011.

The Commissioner for Health, Dr Azibapu Eruani, made this known in an interview with newsmen in Yenagoa.

He said that the health centre projects were in line with the government’s desire to give the best health care services to its citizens.

Eruani emphasised that the health centres, which were located in the eight council areas, “must be inaugurated in April, 2011”.

“We are going to complete, equip and inaugurate them in April next year,” he stressed, adding the projects would testify to the functionality of primary health care delivery system in the state.

The commissioner also said that the government had done much in secondary health care system, saying that the 500-bed Melford Okilo Specialist Hospital in Yenagoa, would be ready in October 2011.

He said that the hospital was about 80 per cent completed, adding that “all the equipment for the hospital are already here and we have procured some of the best hospital equipment in the world”.

On the Diete-Koki Memorial Hospital in Opolo, inaugurated by President Goodluck Jonathan during his recent visit to the state, he said that the hospital had facility for Laparoscopic surgery.

He said that “the hospital has a total of 54 in-patient beds in four executive private wards, 12 private wards, 24 beds of six wards, four-bed wards and four beds in accident and emergency.

“Others are five beds in the gastro unit and five beds for the pediatrics unit.’’

The 500-bed hospital, named posthumously after the late Okilo, who was the first civilian Governor of old Rivers, has been under construction since 2002.