By Ime Silas
Akwa Ibom state Commissioner for Works, Mr. Ephraim Inyangeyen, yesterday said that the state is set to have a standard referral hospital with a complementary laboratories to test all health cases.
Inyangeyen, who stated this while interacting with newsmen at the Methodist General Hospital, Ituk Mbang, which also hosts the state-owned Isolation centre under construction, noted that the facility was built to standards approved by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC).
The Works Commissioner, while hinting that he’s the one supervising the construction also added that the project commenced on April 6 and would soon be completed to cater for patients who have tested positive for the Coronavirus pandemic, also known as Covid-19.
He hinted that the centre, when completed, would also take care of other serious ailments such as Lassa fever, Ebola, and others but strictly on referral basis.
Inyangeyen said “We actually came here on April 6, 2020. What we did then was to demolish the old structures at the site, and the next day being 7th of April, we started the construction of the project in earnest. Our target is to complete the project for His Excellency, the Governor to come for commissioning.
We would have gone far by now but for the rains that fell few days ago, so we decided to suspend some aspects of it because you can’t move machines to site in such situations. But God’s willing, this project would be commissioned by May”.
He noted that all the health safety standards had been taken into consideration in the construction to ensure the safety of health workers and patients, maintaining that the facility would be strictly monitored with the use of CCTV cameras and high tech communication gadgets.
The Works Commissioner said that when completed, the facility would have standard laboratories, canteens, doctors’ quarters, and ward which could accommodate not less than 75 beds, etc, and would still be in optimal use after the Covid-19 pandemic as referral hospital for serious health problems.