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Lagos refurbishes hospitals over patient flow, others

In line with the current administration’s medical infrastructure blueprint strategy which is aimed at revamping health facilities and make it fit for purpose, the Lagos State Government has commenced phased refurbishment and renovation of all general hospitals in the State.

State Commissioner for Health, Prof. Akin Abayomi who disclosed this on Tuesday after a facility inspection tour of two secondary health facilities; Ebute Metta and Harvey Road Health Centres, that have been approved for refurbishment in 2021, noted that the refurbishment and renovation strategy which commenced last year would address the issues of design faults, drainage, patient flow, staff flow, water collection, infection prevention compliance or non-compliance, energy and ventilations. Said he: “Mr. Governor already knows the state of the General Hospitals and his mandate is that we do a deep refurbishment in all the general hospitals and bring them all to standard that is acceptable at an international standard.

“So, instead of repairing the general hospitals in little pieces every year, we are coming to a number of hospitals every year to do a complete refurbishing so that by the time we finish it will look like a brand new hospital and we won’t need to come back to that hospital for a number of years, and then, we move on every year to refurbish six-seven or eight hospitals; that way in two or three years, we would have covered most of the hospitals in Lagos State.” Abayomi while noting that eight hospitals have been earmarked for deep refurbishment in 2021 in addition to the ones started last year, added that the refurbishment and renovation project would also focus on bringing down the carbon footprints in the medical infrastructure and embracing renewable energy like solar, inverters and natural ventilators.

“We are trying to keep the hospitals a low energy and low carbon footprints; we don’t want the Medical Director to spend their internally generated revenue (IGR) on diesel and fueling generators. So, where we can cool a building down naturally and use renewable energy like solar or naturally ventilators or inverters, we would do that just to bring down the carbon footprints of all our medical infrastructure and reduce use of fossil fuel and generally redesign the building or rehabilitate it to be a lot cooler” “We are also paying attention to sanitation; toilet, wash hand basins and we are making sure that all the fittings are robust, strong and dependable, so that for five-ten years, none of the replacement will suffer underlying disrepair. So, that is generally what the intention is”, he said.

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