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The lawmaker representing Nnewi-North state constituency in the Anambra state House of Assembly, Hon. Augustine Onyekachukwu Ike has lamented the fact that there is no general hospital in Nnewi, which according to him is the third largest commercial city in the entire Southeast region of Nigeria.
The lawmaker who disclosed this during an exclusive interview with our correspondent in his office at the state assembly complex Awka, said people are confronted with the harsh realities of seeking medical care in private health facilities where they are compelled to pay through their nose to get attention.
He stated that it is unbelievable and frightening that a well-known commercial city like Nnewi, which has been dubbed the “Japan of Africa,” is devoid of a functioning and reachable public hospital to meet healthcare requirements in the heavily populated area.
The congressman claimed that Nnewi has the worst set of roads in Anambra state and also voiced concern about the extremely poor condition of the roads in the commercial metropolis.
Ike stated that the popular bank road in Nnewi and all the roads leading to the famous Nkwo-Nnewi automobile market are completely terrible, stressing that Nnewi needs a facelift with road infrastructure.
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Ike said, ” We are playing host to a teaching hospital and we also have a lot of private hospitals at commercial level but the issue is population density.
We have three major commercial hub in the Southeast which are Nnewi, Onitsha and Aba respectively. And out of these three cities, the most relatively safe is Nnewi.
Another issue here is poverty rate. You could have private hospitals but what is the average earnings of those high population ? People come from their villages to Nnewi to do menial jobs and they are paid N15,000 or N20,000.
If you go to a private hospital to treat malaria, it will cost you a minimum of N10,000 if you know the doctor. And if you go to the teaching hospital, you may not survive the cure because sometimes such cure will warrant you making calls because indicies is showing that it is one doctor to ten thousand persons in Nigeria.
I noticed that if you we have ten sick people, seven of them easily rush to a drug store to pick drugs without prescriptions. Reason is that they can not wait patiently for the cure in the teaching hospital and they can not afford the private clinics. So they now resort to chemists to get drugs.
Now the role of the general hospital will be to make people get standard drug administration. The general hospital will attend to more people at a cheaper rate.”
According to him, the establishment of a general hospital in Nnewi is long over due, adding that it is a sad reality that Nnewi the second highest revenue generating city in Anambra state has no general hospital.
Although the lawmaker informed that he has opened discussions with the executive arm of government and that the Commissioner for Health assured him that hopefully within the next one year they will have a functional general hospital in Nnewi.
On the issue of roads, the lawmaker also stated that Governor Chukwuma Charles Soludo has declared state of emergency on roads across the state.
He said without being immodest that Nnewi has the most dilapidated set of roads especially in their markets. Ike noted that Nkwo-Nnewi market generates serious revenue for Anambra state but remonstrated that the roads leading to the market are in extremely bad shape.
He said the bank road, the building materials road and other roads have been begging for attention for a very long time but government has binded its eyes on the level of devastations on roads and other social amenities in the famous commercial city.
