Gov. Theodore Orji of Abia state (right) receiving a souvenir from
Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Gado, President, Evangelical Church of West Africa
(ECWA) when he led other executive members of the church on a courtesy
visit to the governor in Umuahia.
By Eddie Onuzuruike
It has become a known fact that the present administration of Chief T. A. Orji has put the well being of Abia people on the front burner of his affairs. These are evident in all the nooks and crannies of Abia. One of the Governor’s medical tours abroad to Howard University, Washington DC hospital in 2007, got him into a serious resolve to replicate what he saw abroad at home, resulting in the Abia Specialist Hospital and Diagnostic Centers which are equipped with never-experienced scanning and dialysis machines in their multiples.
Despite all other health programs like medical missions and visitations from all parts of the world like the one from NANA, Nigerian Nurses in North America, there is a serious and honest attempt to provide health services as close as possible to our doorsteps. The 17 Local Government Areas and electoral wards have Primary Health Centres numbering above Seven Hundred and Ten located in them. Another initiative of having a hundred-bed hospital in over nine local government areas has gone on successfully, placing new general hospitals where there were none, thereby updating the Secondary Health Care delivery.
The governor in his speech rendered some statistics that hastened him into the eye wonder of The Abia State Eye Centre. ‘The burden of preventable blindness is not only in Abia, it is a national and global problem. World-wide, 39 million people are blind, and 246 million have severe or moderate visual impairment; while 90% of these people leave in the developing countries including Nigeria. It is recognized that cataracts is the leading cause of blindness, while glaucoma is the leading cause of irreversible blindness world-wide.’
According to Dr. Okechukwu Ogah, the current and hard striving Commissioner for Health, the recent synergy with MTN Eye Foundation where over 5000 eyeglasses were issued free of charge to people and the upwards of 2000 surgeries carried out in Abia, revealed that there were piled-up cases where a lot of people either due to financial inability or lack of confidence on the side of the providers made people to decide to live and die with their ophthalmological ailments. As he explained, filariasis, cataracts, refractive problems and other painful conditions bayed our people like wild dogs. Just like miracle, it happened that too many people, men and women, adults and children, old and young, all benefited to the extent that those who came groping on swagger sticks and leaning on wives and grandchildren as guides, gallantly hopped home thereafter.
Due to these revelations from the MTN synergy and the global statistics, Chief T. A. Orji, a man who rubs the suiting balm where the shoe pinches hardest embarked on providing Abia with a specialist ophthalmological center. This centre accommodated at the new dialysis house has state-of-the-arts equipment, most of them fully installed and made ready for use but lack experienced manpower to put them into optimum use. Presently, Abia state government is partnering with an advanced Eye Foundation, Isaac Johnson, a well-equipped and experienced Lagos based Eye Centre.This indigenous outfit has medical outreaches in Ikeja Lagos, Ijesha Mushin and Abeokuta. Currently, some Abia medical personnel are in Lagos being trained to train others. These efforts have multiplier effects.
These trainees of Abia in all departments of ophthalmological science, among them oculists, surgeons, ophthalmological nurses and optometrists, will come back to Abia and render services. Chances are that in future, some, especially retirees and ably young alike, may veer off and establish entrepreneurial clinics that will enhance clean and clear vision in far and wide Abia if not Nigeria.
This Abia State pioneering eye centre was commissioned in April 2014, with fanfare.Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu who has turned to be Abia State’s talisman as he has been officially to Abia on three ministerial visits, took the invitation seriously. It may not be so surprising since the Abia helmsman has taken advantage of a friendly wind blowing from the leeward side of the federal government and thus cuing into President Jonathan’s Transformation Agenda. Come to think of it, Prof. Chukwu had one of his best practices when he was a consultant at Abia State University Teaching Hospital in Aba. His visits have become the proverbial palm fruit that hardly falls without leaving with sands stuck on it. We can recall that he was in Abia in July 2013, to cut the colourful tapes festooning the dialysis centres. As he was leaving, he urged the governor to hasten the eye centre. This time he left with another charge that Chief T. A. should build an ENT (ear, nose,
and throat) facility for Abians.
Prof. Onyebuchi, has boldly and pleasantly come and gone. The Abia State Eye Centre remains in Aba road, Umuahia, functional and serviceable to Abia people. When we say ultra-modern, it is no joke, otherwise, where else in the Southeast Geo-political zone can you get ultra modern digital vision assessment machines pooled with digital intraocular machines?
Hitherto, slit lamps, dual and indirect ophthalmoloscopes and digital lensosmeters were strange contraptions and expressions. Most of all, these equipments are hooked to a dedicated internet linkage that interacts with International eye centers at a prompt.This has added to Abia potentials in rendering multiple tourist attractions. The diagnostic Centre from inception has offered succor to Abians and their neighbours from Akwa-Ibom, Cross-river, Rivers and Ebonyi.
In T. A. Orji, I see a man who has sworn to wage endless wars against diseases. He wants Abians to see clearly and discern properly, after all, seeing is believing.
The building that houses the Center though new, was renovated to make it ICT complaint for the installation of the Equipment at a cost of N25 million, while the eye equipment itself cost us N87 million.
This has gone a long way to compliment in-depth structural renovations and medical updates at Amachara Specialist Hospital that has facilities for trainee doctors, medical officers, nurses and midwives and a modern chest unit. It is on records that Abia tops the list with five Schools of Nursing and Midwifery nationwide.
A sound, healthy, body and thousands of pairs of eyes cannot but cherish and admire the legacy projects and in all, enjoy the dividends of 21st century democracy in Abia. As it appears, the vision in Abia as from now on is 20:20 vision.