Date: 2017-03-29

KWARA state government has closed down three private hospitals in the state for allegedly operating illegally.

Speaking with Tribune Online at the Joint Quarterly meeting of the Steering Committee, Technical Consultative Group and Monitoring and Evaluation Officers organised by the Saving One Million Lives Programme for Results (SOML P for R) in Ilorin at the weekend, the state commissioner for Health, Alhaji Sulyman Alege, said the hospitals operated without registering with the state ministry of Health nor possessed registration certificate.

The commissioner, who said that the government was committed to stamping out quackery in the health sector, added that the affected hospitals would not be reopened.

He said that two other hospitals that were closed down over improper procedures in the treatment of patients may be reopened soon as the matter was being resolved.

Alhaji Alege said that as part of efforts to provide people of the state in all the local government areas with quality health services, the government had approved recruitment of 93 healthcare workers after 213 of the workers were employed between September and December last year. He said that the government took health services as humanitarian service and had instructed that healthcare workers in public hospitals should not treat patients poorly.

The commissioner charged the Monitoring and Evaluation officers of the 16 local government areas in the state, who were each provided with laptops and other record taking materials, to make judicious use of the materials.

Also speaking, the national programme officer of (SOML P for R), Okara Dogara, said that with the programme, there would be dissemination of data to sensitise members of the public on the need to check maternal and child mortality in the state.

While stating that the rate at which mortality was recorded in the country was discouraging, Dogara expressed hope that improved health services and sensitisation of all stakeholders on the matter would be helpful.