In the face of COVID-19 Pandemic when Governments embarked on the building of multi billion Naira Isolation centres which are all destroyed today, procurement of suffocating face masks, hand sanitizers and unaccounted COVID-19 funds, Governor Yahay Bello embarked on the construction of medical infrastructure that will outlive COVID-19 era and can tackle any other pandemic.

This is the three hundred-bed Space Kogi Reference Hospital, Okene.

This reference hospital is equipped with the State of the Art Medical instruments including the first hospital based Hyperbaric Oxygen Treatment (HBOT) chamber in Nigeria. Read it again: Kogi Reference Hospital has the first Hyperbaric Oxygen Treatment Chamber in Nigeria.

With this development, Nigeria becomes the fifth Country in Africa that can boast of such a sophisticated medical equipment. This is great news for Nigerian patients who hitherto had to travel abroad for such treatments. Whoever has been following the trend of achievments in Kogi State Health Sector must have now seen the purposeful move to turn the State to a choice destination for Health tourism.

This is only possible with much thanks to the determination of His Excellency Alh. Yahaya Bello, to revamp the State’s Health sector and change the old narrative of a moribund sector that supervised substandard services.

HBOT chamber is a very useful equipment that can help in healing people with both internal and external life threatening injuries as well as in health complications like: Air or gas embolism, brain and sinus infections, necrotizing soft tissue infections, arterial insufficiency or low blood flow in the arteries, radiation injury especially as a result of cancer treatment,
anaemia, osteomyelitis, gas gangrene, carbon monoxide poisoning, burns, skin grafts etc. HBOT is becoming increasingly popular and mostly used as adjuvant therapy to conventional treatment/management of some life threatening conditions to minimise healing times.

This particular hospital is replicated in Eganyi in Ajaokuta local government area, Gegu-Beki in Kogi Local Government Area and Isanlu in Yagba West Local Government Area of Kogi State though with fewer bed-space.

This is in addition to the transformation of General Hospital , Idah to Zonal Hospital and rehabilitation and expansion of primary healthcare to over 150 communities in the state.

This is Yahaya Bello’s Effect

Hope23

YahayaBello

Onogwu Muhammed
09/05/2022