The Borno State Government, on Monday, lamented the pollution of the soil and drinking water by decomposing dead bodies and bomb shrapnel and residues of various other warfare materials used in the Boko Haram violent conflict over the last 13 years.
The state also expressed regrets that it lost about 53 per cent of its healthcare workforce to the Boko Haram insurgency.
The Executive Secretary of Borno State Scholarship Board, Bala Isa, who spoke in Maiduguri on Monday, said the health workers were either killed by the terrorists or the war forced them to flee to safe climes within and outside the country.
Isa said the situation had taken a toll on the state’s healthcare system.
Isa spoke while announcing the award of scholarships for the training of the medical personnel to replace the lost ones.
He said the state government urgently packaged the programme of training to handle the situation as it gradually relocates residents displaced by the insurgency to their ancestral communities to rebuild their lives.
He said, “Warfare materials and activities like the decomposition of dead bodies and rusting of bomb shrapnel and other materials used in the Boko Haram violent conflict have polluted the soil and drinking water in the majority of the sacked or deserted communities.
“So, as we relocate IDPs to their ancestral communities, we have realised that we are face-to-face with an emerging health crisis that requires urgent attention.
“Over the years, we found ourselves in a situation where the Boko Haram insurgency has either chased out or killed most of the medical doctors and other health workers, especially those who were not state indigenes.
“So, the healthcare delivery predicament of the state reached a point where even in the state capital, Maiduguri, we lack adequate healthcare workers.
“This is why the governor explored the possibility of this training programme.”
He explained that the programme was aimed at training indigenes from those localities, employing and sending them back there to work for their communities, “especially as healthcare workers who are indigenes are still scared of working in the last call communities of the state.”
Isa said N637, 563, 000 had been released for the first-year training of the 1,088 Nursing Sciences personnel, who will be awarded certificates in Community Nursing, Community Midwifery and the National Diploma in Nursing.
He said, “Apart from these, the state government is currently sponsoring the education of 76 medical doctors, including 19 in Egypt and 44 at the Federal University of Health Sciences, Azare Bauchi State; as well as 32 dentists.”
Source | Punchng
