As the Cross River State governor, Bassey Edet Otu, flag-offs of the state Task Force on Health Quality & Anti Quackery in the Cross River State Health Sector, Dan Abubakar, a medical doctor and State Coordinator of the Task Force, says politicians and individuals offering free medical outreaches, must also help government ensure that the quality of health care delivered at these outreaches, is not diluted.
Abubakar who spoke with www.calitown.com, preparatory to the flag-off ceremony holding this Tuesday, May 21, 2024, from ten in the morning, at the General Hospital, Calabar, was particular that, ” the issue of free medical outreaches, provided especially by our politicians, is of great concern to government because at those outreaches, they are no set standards for delivery, they are no monitors for the outreaches or even ways of knowing what will happen after the outreach. How do they connect with the people they have treated, for medical assessment and follow-ups? Who assesses the medical facilities on ground to be sure they meet medical standards? Our response as a task force working for government has been to come up with a 12-point guideline to govern free medical outreaches in CRS.”
“After the flag-off, it will become compulsory that if you want to carry out a free medical outreach in the state, an application(s) will have to be sent to the Commissioner of Heath, informing him that you want to conduct a medical outreach. It will help us know the individual(s) or organization(s) sponsoring the outreach, help us know the location for the outreach, length of time for the outreach, medical activities to be carried out; medical, surgical, laboratory activities have to be listed out clearly. We also need to know the quality and qualifications of the medical personnel to be deployed at the medical outreach, to be sure they have their practicing licenses up to date and have capacity to do what they will be doing at the outreach. We want to know which medical facility(s) will be used. At the end of the outreach, where will data collected be domiciled?”
He insisted that, “what we are doing with this new approach is not a witch hunting process, but an attempt to properly guide the administration of health care to our people.”
On quackery in the state, Abubakar asserted that, “medical quackery has eaten deep into the fabrics of our public and private health sectors in our country. The quacks who have no knowledge of medical practice and procedure, promote and administer dangerous substances to an unsuspecting public, in most cases, one concoction comes with promises of curing all illnesses. Some of them even set up hospitals and clinics, some even operate on patients. There is an example of one of such cases where a guy came in from Benue and established in Ogoja, with the promise of offering medical services he wasn’t qualified to offer, even carrying out surgical operations. He was running a hospital before he was discovered and the hospital was shut. We still have them all over the place.”
“We will work at eradicating most of these people and illegal practices using strategies I will not readily make public.”
“We have also found our that they are maternity homes all over the place run by qualified and retired midwives, but they are not registered. We are not a registering body, what we can only do as a task force is identify these people and places to government and government will now know what policy direction to embrace towards them.”
He sued for the understanding cooperation of all manner of persons living in and around the state, to help ensure that the task force delivers on her core mandate.
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