Kano Residents Groan Over Poor Health Care Delivery At Grassroots

By Kolawole Omoniyi

…As Pregnant Women Dying At Midnight

Rahama Ismail, a housewife and mother of two recently gave up the ghost at Guringawa community in Kumbotso local government area of Kano State after she delivered a baby boy at home. This happened at midnight after a failed attempt to access a nearest health center.

The woman died two hours after the delivery following uncontrollably bleeding in anticipation of placenta. Unfortunately, the baby, born while still inside the amniotic sac, also died shortly due to lack of required experience to unclothe the boy from the sac.

The death of Rahama is still fresh in the memory of her neighbor, Samira Garba Abubakar. She narrated to Factual Times, her inoperable efforts to save the life of her intimate friend when she started laboring at midnight.

“When she started the labour at night, we did not meet anybody at Gwagwarwa Health Center, we knocked on the door of one health worker in the neighborhood, she attempted to help but she said she had no glove and some other materials at home”.

“After running helter-skelter, Rahama was able to deliver the baby inside her room. We were very happy, but the joy only lasted for a moment as the baby came out with amniotic sac. We got confused because we didn’t know how to remove the baby from the sac. He died eventually when there was no help”. Abubakar explained in tears.

Health Centers Closing at 3pm, No Weekend Service

According to her, such tragic incident had become a recurrence decimal in the area. “Rahama was the second neighbour that I lost to such incident last year alone and many of such had happened in the past because our health center closes at 3.pm daily and they don’t even come to work on Saturday and Sunday” She lamented.

The situation is similar in other visited Kano’s outskirt communities including ‘Yar Gaya in Dawakin Kudu LGA, Gawon Bature and Sai Lafia in Makoda LGA and Gwanda in Dambatta LGA. The villagers usually travel for a long distance of about 15km to access medical centers.

One of the residents, Dahir Garba told our correspondent that lack of weekend service and shift rotation among workers had cost several lives in many villages in Warawa LGA.

“In the entire Warawa Local Government, all Primary Health Centers are closing around 3.pm, no weekend service, pregnant women and other patients used to travel to Wudil LGA or Dawakin Kudu General hospitals for medical attention and in case of an emergency situation at night, many people have lost their lives in the process” He explained.

Kano Residents Disguising To Access Hospital in Jigawa State

Gawon Bature village in Makoda LGA shares boundary with Kasaure town in Jigawa State. The villagers are leveraging on the proximity to access a general hospital in Kasaure for urgent medical attention especially at night.

Of course they have to be smart about it because they must claim to be an indigene of Jigawa State before they could be attended to. A resident, Sani Abubakar also narrated their ordeal.

“Kano government officials are only coming here to collect tax on our farmlands; they usually threaten to confiscate our lands if we fail to pay. As you can see, we don’t have functional hospital here, we always run to Kasaure and lie to their officials that we are Jigawa indigenes, because if they find out that we are coming from Kano, they will not attend to us, many people including pregnant women have died in this village if their illness is critical at midnight”.

Women Trekking 15KM Distance to Access Hospitals – Villager

Also, people of Gwanda village in Dambatta LGA, predominantly farmers, are not exempted from the untold hardship.

A villager, Abdullahi Sule explained “Truly we have Primary Health Care facility here but you will not meet anybody there now because today is Saturday. Even on normal days, no medical Doctor. Our wives used to trek for about 15km distance to a nearest hospital that is running 24 hours service.

Besides the inability of the health centers to run 24 hours shifts, the state of their facilities is worrisome. Kano has only 40 general hospitals, while most of standard hospitals in the state are situated within the metropolis, covering just eight out of the 44 local government areas in the state.

Factual Times observed that the 40 government general hospitals are being overstretched by the overwhelming influx of patients from every nook and cranny of the state. Also, women are being discharged shortly after their delivery either medically fit or not to accommodate other patients on the queue.

Poor State of 1, 200 PHCs Worrisome – Official

Kano State has about 1,200 Primary Health Care Centers to complement its limited general hospitals. However, the aforesaid experiences of the residents at grassroots are convincing enough to explain the reason for the overstretched standard hospitals in the city.

When contacted, the Executive Secretary of the Kano State Primary Health Care Management Board, Dr Tijjani Hussaini admitted that many of the PHCs lack the required manpower and facilities to run 24 hours and weekend services.

“In Kano we have about 1, 200 PHC facilities in various categorization, first, we have Standard PHC, second, Health Clinic and lastly, Health Post, out of these, only the first category which is Standard PHC facilities are expected to run 24 hours services”. He explained.

Dr Hussaini spoke further “In an ideal situation, the standard PHC facilities must have 13 rooms to run delivery, antenatal, postnatal, family planning and immunization services as well as laboratory, but many of our PHC facilities do not have such capacity, only 200 of the facilities are running 24hrs services. Even though they were still not up to the required standard, we consider them to be standard because they were registered under the State Contributory Health Care Programme”.

According to him, not all LGAs in Kano have general hospitals, citing Kunci and Albasu among the excluded LGAs. “That is why we can’t post Doctors to those LGAs because there are no facilities for Doctors to work in such location. Apart from that, many Doctors and other health workers are running away from the villages due to poor amenities” He lamented.

Dr Tijjani described the statistics of maternal mortality in the state due to poor healthcare facilities and their inability to run 24 hours services as worrisome. He said there are efforts on the pipeline to recruit more medical workers to complement the 10, 000 workers under the Board’s payroll.

On his part, the Commissioner for Health, Dr Aminu Ibrahim Tsanyawa said his current utmost priority is how to decongest the general hospitals within the metropolis by improving the services of the Primary Health Care Centers across the State. He promised that the concerted efforts in that regard will start yielding positive results soonest.