The need for community to assume ownership of any health care centre or facility in their domain has been brought to the fore .
The Community Programme Officer of a Civil Society in Malaria Control, Immunization and Nutrition, (ACOMIN), Mrs. Joy Nwankwo made the call in Okpanam while addressing different groups of people in the community on their findings concerning the status of the Ogbeobi Comprehensive Health Centre and the Health Centre in Obodogba Quarters .
She stated that they CDOs working under ACOMIN, which she disclosed was a civil society organization on malaria control, immunization and nutrition.
Mrs. Nwankwo said that the residents should contribute their quota towards the sustainability of the health centres and reminded them that they should not wait for government to do it all alone.
She decried the state of the two health centres in the community, adding that as part of their advocacies, they had visited the health centres to ascertain the condition of the facilities in centres.
Nwankwo, who said that as a comprehensive health centre, Ogbeobi ought to have a doctor, stressing that despite the fact that the heath centre has staff including a laboratory scientist, the facilities such as hospital beds to even admit patients not to talk of other critical facilities.
While saying that most of the facilities at the two health centres were dilapidated, Nwankwo stated that having gone to the centres, they were in the community to meet the various segments of the people to see how they could assist in rehabilitating the facilities in the centres.
Mrs. Nwankwo asserted that most communities often neglected the use of the health centres and prefer General Hospitals , emphasizing that in communities where there was no General Hospitals and Federal Medical Centres, the people should see the need to make their health centres to work.
Earlier, the Executive Director, Riverine Health Initiative, Engr. Honesty Omagbemi and the community representative of ACOMIN, Mrs. Onyeka Onyesikaidi said that the NGO was interfacing between communities and the government to bring infrastructural development to communities .
They stated that ACOMIN deployed them to the field to check the state of the health centres in the state just as Mrs. Onyesikaidi hinted that some people in Ogbeobi and Obodogba had already indicated interest to support the initiative.
