The Township Clinic, Gwagwalada, FCT, on Friday urged the Gwagwalada Area Council to provide waste incinerators and construct more toilets to boost hygiene in the health centre.

Mr Umar Bako, the clinic’s Chief Nursing Officer, made the call in an interview with News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja.

He underscored the need to renovate the clinic which, he said, was constructed in the 1980s.

He said that parts of the vicinity of the clinic had been water-logged due to its poor drainage system, calling for prompt intervention by constructing drains so as to guard against the transmission of diseases in the neighbourhood.

“We are trying our best but we need an incinerator here to burn waste, as most of the refuse we generate here are left to litter the environment due to the delay of sanitary inspectors in removing them regularly.

“As you can also see, we don’t have drainage systems to ensure free flow of water.

“In our antenatal section, for instance, we have between 80 and 100 pregnant women coming there thrice a week. We, therefore, urge the area council to help us and improve our landscape.

“Look at the area, if it will work, we need it to be landscaped because of the water that accumulated there. We also want the whole place to be renovated, most of the walls have cracks, while some roofs are leaking.’’

Bako said it was unfortunate that the clinic lacked adequate toilets, adding that its overall out-patient population, which stood at between 80 and 100 patients daily, had to manage only two toilets.

He underscored the need to construct more toilets in the health centre, saying that the available ones were grossly inadequate, considering the number of pregnant women and other out-patients that were making use of the clinic.

Bako said that the construction of additional toilets would discourage the patients from practising open defecation in the vicinity of the clinic.

He also stressed the need to tackle the power supply challenges facing the clinic, saying that erratic power supply to the clinic had obviously hindered its operations.

He added that there were difficulties in procuring fuel regularly for the clinic’s electricity generator because of paucity of funds. (NAN)

– Nov. 2, 2018 @ 12:05 GMT |