Doctor Decries Poor State Of Rural Health Sector

By Faith Okerinmodun

The Director Rural Health/Satellite Clinic, Seventh Days Adventist Hospital, Ile-Ife, Osun state, Dr Samson Bamidele Popoola, has decried the poor state of the rural Health sector, noting that the Rural Health Sector is nothing to write home about.

Dr. Samson Bamidele Popoola 

The Director of Nursing Services lamented that both the Federal, State and Local Government have abandoned the rural health sector thereby leaving so many people who doesn’t have the capacity to go to the city to treat themselves in the hands of untimely death.

He added that during the time of Ransom kuti, there was primary Health care in accordance with the World health organization (WHO) but it’s sadonic that it has been abandoned

According to him, “Nigeria is lacking food provision because they have forgotten the origin of where they get food items from. Even the so called farmers have left agriculture for the city because of lack of provision by the government and lack of health services.

“It is not about the government looking into the Rural Health Sector alone but it is all about them making the rural areas habitable for workers that are being sent there.

“Workers complain about the bad roads because when conveying an emergency patient from the rural areas to the city, the patient would have given up. They also lack electricity and pipe borne water. All these things make the place unbearable for workers to stay.

“In our hospital we go to rural areas everyday to give them free health care but the Jeep we use for transportation has broken down so we have stopped going there. Until we get another one or we are given another as donor, there will be no means of transportation.

“And we are limited because we don’t have any source of income, no salary but we rely on the money we get from the patients to carry out some little projects.

” We have to follow the standard of the World health Organization (WHO),we need basic amenities for life and health is part of them. We all need it even if we are in the bush or in the city. If you go to villages you will see so many buildings with health post on them but there is no personnel there, no single drug can be found there, what is the meaning of that?It is useless.”