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By Akanji Alowolodu, Bauchi
Over 20 years after it was constructed and commissioned for use by the general public, the Lekka Maternity in Tafawa Balewa LGA of Bauchi State is set to be rehabilitated and upgraded.
The rehabilitation exercise is to be undertaken by a Non-Governmental Organization, Khairos Initiative which is focused on improving access to quality but affordable healthcare services.
The Lekka Maternity was built over 20 years ago during the PDP led administration of former Governor Ahmed Adamu Mu’azu but has been in a deplorable condition for about five years now.
Speaking with Journalists during a visit to the facility, the officer in charge of the Maternity, Bala Audu, lamented that in the past five years, windstorms blew off the roof of the hospital three different times and the community and staff of the facility usually contribute to fix it.
According to him, “We’ve been managing the hospital like that until Khairos Initiative came in to start the renovation. One of the problems we’ve been having is the fact that people of the community stopped coming here because of the level of dilapidation. Sick people were not being brought again. But since this NGO came in to start this work, people have started coming again”.
He added that, “Because women stopped coming to the maternity, when a woman is in labour in the area, they usually take her to the house of the midwife so she can assist in the delivery but if there’s no means of taking her there, the midwife would go to the house if the pregnant woman and take delivery of the baby”.
Bala Audu added that, “Even immunization, people have stopped bringing children for routine immunization, we’ll have to follow them to their houses. We also lack staff in the hospital. We, the staff, are two with a few volunteers” .
“Honestly, we have not been finding it easy here working in this condition, we’ve been managing because we don’t have any other choice. This is a maternity and you know that the condition is not supposed to be like this and you’ve been going to other hospitals and maternities. We are working in the only condition we found ourselves in,” he said.
He however expressed gratitude to Khairos Initiative for the gesture to renovate the facility and improve its status.
The only Midwife in the hospital, Hauwa’u Hassan, also lamented that they have not been finding it easy while trying to take care of the suck and pregnant women as the condition of the hospital is very discouraging.
She said: “Since the past five years, anytime women come and see the condition of the hospital, they’ll leave to Luda. A lot of them stopped coming for deliveries because when they come, they stay in the open and when rain comes, they are affected. Before the roof was blown off the last time, we usually have you to 10 deliveries weekly and this stopped, they even stopped coming for antenatal”.
“We are not always happy and comfortable staying here in the hospital especially when it rains, it’s either you run away from the maternity to areas where we can be safe otherwise, we get soaked with the rains,” she lamented. In an interview with Journalists, Dr. Moji Iheme, who spoke on behalf of the NGO, said that Khairos Initiative, a United Kingdom funded organization, which was set up to help indigent people by touching their lives positively, found out about the facility and how pregnant women no longer patronized the only facility in the area.
She said that they discovered that pregnant women from the village were often transported to the hospital in another village kilometers away in a wheelbarrow for delivery.
According to her, “We heard about the state of the maternity, how bad it was and we went and saw it. They told us that women of the village don’t go there anymore, they take them to the next village called Luda in a wheelbarrow when they are in labour” .
“So, we thought of how to revive the place so that it will be closer to the women of the rural area. Our Chief Executive then sourced for funds in the UK. This project is being done by Khairos Initiative powered by Kitchen-Table Charity Trust’ who heard of what we wanted to do and decided to help us in sourcing for some of the funds,” Moji Iheme said.
