Yobe govt spends N360m annually on free dialysis scheme

The Yobe State government spends about N360 million annually to provide free dialysis services at the Yobe State University Teaching Hospital (YSUTH), Damaturu, the hospital’s Chief Medical Director, Baba Goni, has said.

Mr Goni said the hospital conducts between 600 and 700 free haemodialysis sessions every month under the programme, which has been running since 2017.

He disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Damaturu on Thursday.

According to him, the hospital spends N30 million monthly on the programme.

“In dialysis, you don’t count the number of patients because one patient can have two or three sessions in a week,” he said.

“The cost of dialysis per session in other teaching hospitals is about N50,000, excluding the cost of drugs, laboratory investigation and admission where necessary.”

Mr Goni said the state government had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with a reputable company supplying dialysis consumables to ensure that the treatment was sustained.

He said the hospital also performed free fistula surgeries to have “vascular access” to patients with Chronic Kidney Disease.

According to him, vascular surgeons are usually invited to conduct the procedure on patients while the hospital pays for the services and purchases the required consumables.

The CMD said a water treatment plant and five additional dialysis machines were recently procured, bringing the total number of functional dialysis machines at the facility to 11.

Mr Goni said that plans had reached an advanced stage to establish another dialysis centre at the Specialists’ Hospital, Gashua, the epicentre of kidney disease in the state.

He said the proposed dialysis centre in Gashua was captured in the 2026 budget to justify the commitment of the state government to the project aimed at easing the suffering of the people.

“Recently, we travelled to Ghana with the Commissioner for Health, where we negotiated with some partners to bring in these dialysis machines and train our nurses and medical engineers who will maintain them,” he said.

“Very soon, people will start enjoying these services over there, so that they don’t have to bear the inconvenience and transportation cost of coming to Damaturu for the treatment.

“I am using this medium to appeal to our people for their understanding of the complex nature of planning and implementation of government projects, which usually take some time.”

Mr Goni announced that a preliminary report on the 2025 kidney disease research, sponsored by the state and conducted in Gashua, would soon be submitted to Governor Mai Mala Buni for necessary action.

He, however, said the report would be thoroughly scrutinised before causality could be established because drawing conclusions on things that were not clear could have economic consequences.

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“Sometimes the report may suggest action to be taken against the economic livelihood of the communities. We don’t want to do that if we are not fully convinced because poverty is also a problem.

“Remember, during the COVID-19 pandemic, communities were locked down, and the consequences were worse than COVID because many people could not go out to fend for their families,” he said.

Mr Goni said the state and the Urology and Nephrology Centre, Mansoura in Egypt, had, in 2018, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for training doctors and other specialists at the YSUTH on kidney transplant.

He said although, the programme was obstructed by the COVID-19 pandemic, efforts were made to resume its implementation.