The Owerri branch of Nigerian Medical Association has described as unfortunate the state of health facilities in Imo State.
NMA also said that medical institutions in the state are deteriorating because of the state Government allegedly had interest in dealing with non professionals, adding that the Association will not recognize Barr Ngozi Njoku who the governor appointed as the commissioner for health and women affairs.
The branch chairman, Darlington Akuku, the immediate past chairman, Hyacinth Emele and a former Chairman of the branch, Jideuma Egwim, who spoke on Thursday in Owerri, the state capital, asserted that condition of health delivery system of the state was the worst throughout the country.
Its chairman, Akukwu said that the health sector in the last six years under under the watch of the governor, Rochas Okorocha,was grossly neglected, just as he condemned the choice of the governor to had appointed a legal practitioner as the state’s commissioner for health.
Akukwu said “health system in Imo is the worst, new HIV/AIDS cases are on an alarming ratio, while people already living with the infection are abandoning their treatment in droves because they can no longer afford cost of the high medicare in the State owned Government hospitals”.
He regretted that despite the spread of Meningitis towards the South, the State ministry of health Health was had yet to begin public awareness programs to educate people on how best to curb it when it arises.
Akuku said that the only institution that trains medical students in the state , Imo State University Teaching Hospital, Orlu,had lost accreditation for years now with the government doing nothing to reverse the trend.
He said that medical students now spend ten years for six years programs.
Immediate past Chairman, Emele said the Imo Specialist Hospital Umuguma has only three Consultants employed by by the former administration.
The principal officer to the governor on electronic media, Abasiodu Idiong, said that the medical doctors had left their professional duties and joined the opposition in discrediting the the good works of his principal.
