By Hope Nda & Suh Keline
The Southwest Regional Delegation of Public Health Tuesday, July 11, handed over a government package consisting of incubators and ICT devices to District and Regional Hospitals in the Region to boost access to healthcare.
The Regional Delegate for Public Health, Dr. Filbert Eko Eko, handed the equipment to representatives of the beneficiary health facilities in Buea. Among health districts that received the equipment were Bangem, Muyuka, Mamfe, Mundemba, Buea and Limbe.
“We received equipment from His Excellency the Minister of Public Health and also the WHO representatives in the country, to booster, to enhance data management, to enhance care in our facilities,” said Dr Filbert Eko Eko.
“So in that light, we received incubators infant incubators. All of us know the importance of incubators; we know the acute shortage of incubators in other regions. Of course, we received a good consignment of incubators and we are distributing to a lot of health facilities today.”
While both Regional and District Hospitals received about two incubators each, only the districts were given ICT devices, which included a laptop, modem and a handset.
The Regional Delegate said ICTs were only given to the districts because they were the pivot of health data generation and transmission and these devices will boost their performances.
“All these equipment will not only help to cater for the patients, but will also help give us sound data that we can use to make policies to improve on the health of the Region of the Southwest,” he added.
He called on the beneficiary districts to use the equipment judiciously and cater for them as though they were private property.
“Government material is government material. You need to take good care of them as your own, not without maintenance because if you misuse them today, others will not be able to use them tomorrow,” the Regional health boss said adding that, “Let the life time be the life span. Don’t shorten the life span because of bad usage”.
Among those who received the equipement on behalf of their health districts was Nyesa Verolyn, the Focal Point of Communicator for Mundemba Health District in Ndian Division.
She said the incubators were vital to improving the Mundemba population’s access to healthcare and that the ICTs will facilitate their data gathering and transmission of health information.
“Looking at Mundemba, it is very far away and cut off from civilization with the bad roads and crisis included. With the Incubator, it will really go a long way because we have had two or three deaths of premature children because of the lack of an incubator to really give appropriate care to these children so that would go a long way to help us save lives,” Nyesa said.
Despite poor Internet network in Mundemba, she was hopeful the ICTs will facilitate their work. “Looking at our District in Mundemba, we have really poor network so the Internet modem will really help us boost the reporting of the District as a whole. We have poor network, bad roads and our personal laptops are bad,” she said.