Government Hospital , Ibusa: Suffering from Government's lack of attention

Though an illustrious indigene of Ibusa in Delta State , it was my first time inside the Government Hospital , Ibusa. It was indeed an opportunity to talk a long walk round the hospital and see for my self the reason indigenes show predilection for private hospitals inside and outside the town. This is a hospital finely located at one of the two major entrances of the town. The structures put in place are tastefully and massively attractive with near perfect architectural finishing and large land space available for future development. The Ibusa indigenes have for a long time depended on the hospital for medical needs until institution became unspeakably decayed, then proneness to abandonment. 

The Delta State Commissioner for Health, Dr Joseph Otumara accompanied by the Permanent Secretary, Dr. Patrick Ofili and the Director of Medical of Medical Services and Training, Dr. Daniel Omodon, after inspecting the hospital recently announced the selection of the hospital as one of the hospitals in the state proposed for the free medical care for children under the age of five. Children between ages 0-5 according to the State Government under the proposed program will benefit from medical and surgery services at no cost. The Commissioner after being conducted round various wards and offices by the Medical Director, Dr. Samuel Biolonwu commended the hospital's management for its good state of preparedness.

While the idea of such a program is highly a good one, many of the indigenes of the town frowns at the attitude of the State Government that has left the institution to continue to rot away like an abandoned project. The Government in the past has done nothing to win patients who now travel as far as Asaba and Ogwashi-Uku to receive medical attentions. Again, It may be argued that since the completion of the "Uno Ogwu General Hospital" only the slight raising of its fence, a change of name from "General Hospital, Ibusa" to "Government Hospital, Ibusa" and mini bore-holes been notable in its recent history. Even then, many of Ibusa indigenes have philanthropically and self-spiritedly donated bore-holes to the hospital. For instance, at the right wing inside the hospital stands a bore-hole structure donated by Martin Ikediashi, a native of the town, commissioned by Col John E. Yeri, the then Military Governor of Bendel State on April 19, 1991.

Permanently abandoned inside the hospital's premises are two Volkswagen Beetle vehicles with registration number BD 2057 and AG 365 ASB. Ironically one of the abandoned cars bears the registration number of the defunct Bendel State . Like Martin Ikediashi, several other groups and associations have striven to keep the health institution from going moribund but the State's Government's intervention is necessary if the hospital should enjoy the people's patronage and if the people must stop traveling to far away towns like Benin, Agbor, Ogwashi-Uku and Asaba to receive medical services.

Inside the hospital, farming activities take place with women seen carrying cassava tubers harvested in the hospital to their homes. None of them agreed to disclose to this writer whether they hired the land for farming or simply encroached because what it speaks is clearly a hospital living a life of abandonment. And as an undisclosed indigene puts it "if the hospital cannot attend to the sick, it will surely attend to people seeking for land to plant crops"

The gory state of the Ibusa hospital epitomizes the enjoyment of monopoly of development by other towns in state as put in place by Ex-Governor Ibori to the detriment of other communities while groups and individuals of others work hard to develop their own out of self-development. The earlier the government looks the way of the hospital competing with weeds, the better for the people.

By Emeka Esogbue 

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