Nigerian Government, in partnership with both the World Health Organisation and the United Nations Children’s Fund, have commenced trainings for medical professionals on the right application and handling of oxygen as a drug.
This initiative, our correspondent gathered, is in line with the FG’s resolve to bridge the oxygen application deficit gap among health practitioners.
It is also a fall out of some of the challenges that came to the fore while the Covid-19 pandemic ravaged the country.
Speaking during a three-day workshop on dissemination of national medical oxygen document for North-East states, the Commissioner for Health, Gombe State, Dr Habu Dahiru, hailed the organisers while also disclosing that the aim of the workshop was to train health workers through a handbook ón the best application method of oxygen.
Dahiru said, “You know that oxygen is a drug and an essential drug that will be used in the areas of emergency from the labour room, to the paediatric ward, theatre.
“Therefore, we want to set up the mechanism where oxygen will be made available to all facilities. Everyone should have easy access to oxygen.”
Dahiru pleaded with stakeholders to collaborate with states, adding that they know the geographical spread.
“We recommended strongly that when they want to cite such projects, they should come and sit with state officers to look at locations that can be easily accessed,” he advised.
Also speaking, the representative of Federal Ministry of Health, Oxygen Desk, Hospital Services, Bishara Emmanuel, said that the team was in the state for a review of the 2023-2027 edition of oxygen dissemination strategy.
He said, “People are dying because of hypoxemia cases. People are dying from lack of oxygen. Oxygen is very limited across the country, and apart from that, we want our health workers to be informed on how to administer oxygen and where to get oxygen. We wan them to be familiar with who is supposed to provide the oxygen.
“We have about 56 people participating in this workshop but at the moment we have over 70.”
Emmanuel further informed the gathering that the Federal Government had made enormous investments in making oxygen available, “Because after the COVID-19 pandemic, we realised there was so much gap in the ecosystem and people were finding it difficult to get oxygen.
“Therefore, the government started by establishing 38 oxygen plants across the country in collaboration with global fund, FG procured additional 12 oxygen plants. We have the approval for the 63 oxygen plants across each geopolitical zone.
“We have started the training of biomedical engineers across the country because we realise there are few biomedical engineers in the country. We have also embarked on the piping of oxygen across the 44 tertiary federal hospitals,” he pointed out.
On his part, Dr Jibril Mohammed, who represented UNICEF Bauchi field office, said the dissemination of the policy will scale up medical oxygen.
According to him, “It’s been developed by the Federal Ministry of Health and partners of which UNICEF is an active partner. We were involved in the development of this strategic document. The essence of the document is to give guidance on how medical oxygen will be generated as well as how it will be utilised. The essence is to make sure oxygen is available as a clinical commodity like drugs to ensure that lives are saved, especially in paediatrics, where we used to lose babies in the maternity and surgical departments.
“UNICEF felt it should be a partner by supporting the Federal Ministry of Health, including other partners to make sure that oxygen is provided,” he remarked
Continuing, Mohammed in a further chat with Arewa PUNCH stressed that UNICEF has supported in the establishment of nine plants across the country, “Likewise in the North-East UNICEF supported the establishment of oxygen plant in Yobe, Damaturu, as well as Azare in Bauchi State.”
On the essence of the workshop, he insisted that beneficiaries of the training would be trained to step down the knowledge, adding that oxygen is more dangerous than cooking gas. “The maintenance, the storage, transportation has to be in accordance with the guidelines. We have engineers who handle the plants because if these plants are manhandled, it will be catastrophic because the kind of fire that will engulf the place is more than the cooking gas,” he educated.
Also, the State Coordinator, World Health Organisation, Gombe State Office, Dr Umar Ismail, described WHO as a key stakeholder that spearheaded the policy development, even as he maintained that, “We are fully involved supporting the government right from the planning stage was fully involved to build the 2017 -2022 oxygen strategy in the country.”
On the situation in Gombe State, the state coordinator said “the review of 2022-2027 the current one being disseminated today is a result of some of the lessons learnt from Covid-19 whereby patients that needed oxygen were dying due to lack of oxygen.
“For Gombe State, the Federal Government is rolling out the strategy and look at how states can adopt the strategy to ensure that all health facilities including private health facilities have access to the utilisation of oxygen when patients need it.” PUNCH
