Hope rises for women, children in Amuwo-Odofin
FRIDAY, 29 JANUARY 2010 01:07 JOSHUA BASSEY
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As maternal/childcare centre ready for completion
For women and children living within Amuwo-Odofin and Satellite/Oriade areas of Lagos, impediments to access to maternal and childcare health services will soon be a thing of the past. Currently, a facility at Festac First Gate, to be known as Maternal and Childcare Centre (MCC), is nearing completion. The facility is one of the seven similar structures undergoing construction in selected areas of Lagos under the integrated maternal and childcare initiative of the state government. Others are located in Ikorodu, Isolo, Ifako-Ijaiye, Ajeromi, Gbaja and Lekki.

While those of Ikorodu, Isolo, Ifako-Ijaiye and Ajeromi are sited within already existing general hospital complexes, the Gbaja centre is designed to serve as an annex to the Surulere General Hospital. Invariably, the Amuwo-Odofin centre is being constructed within an area already earmarked for a future general hospital along Festac First Avenue. Findings revealed that the MCCs would be equipped with similar facilities and deliver same services on completion. The facilities include reception, clinics, medical record stores, resuscitation, scan and procedure rooms, family planning and counselling clinic as well as social welfare officers’ room. Others are laboratories, X-ray room, sluice, autoclave, changing and call rooms, admission wards (private and public), treatment and day room/nursery, baby cot nursery as well as milk/nurses rooms and stations.

The centres when completed will offer emergencies, gynaecological, laboratory, delivery for uncomplicated and complicated child births, in-patient care for infants and young children, ante-natal and post-natal admission as well as radio-diagnostic services.

Jide Idris, commissioner for health, Lagos State said be four-storey structure had the capacity for between 100 and 110 beds and was approved by the state executive council on the realisation that majority of patients attending primary and secondary public health facilities are women and children.

Further justifying the decision to build the centre, Idris justified the need to have, at least, a public secondary health facility to service the population of the Amuwo-Odofin/Oriade axis in view of the on-going expansion of Lagos-Badagry Road. On the expected benefit, the commissioner said, “this facility will bring about immense socio-economic benefits to Lagos State and its citizenry through the provision of good quality and accessible services in a well-equipped modern facility for the care of mothers and their babies.”

An engineer from Nego Construction Company, the firm handling the project, told CityFile on condition of anonymity that the facility was 85 percent completed and would likely be delivered to the state government by the end of February. It was noticed that finishing touches were already being applied, as painters were at work.

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