The General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Pastor Enoch Adeboye, said the church has spent N61 billion on intervention projects across the country.

Mr Adeboye stated this during the inauguration of Enoch and Folu Adeboye Dialysis Centre at the Immanuel General Hospital, in the Eket Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom on Monday.

Mr Adeboye, represented by the Intercontinental Overseer, Christian Social Responsibility of RCCG, Pastor Idowu Iluyomade, said the centre had been equipped with three brand new dialysis machines, water treatment plant and 130 KVA generator.

“We have spent over N61 billion on intervention projects in Nigeria,”Adeboye said.

He noted that no fewer than 154 million people had benefited from the interventions in the last five years. He added that RCCG had 1, 200 functioning dialysis machines in their health facilities across the country.

“The initial beneficiary states are Ogun, Lagos, Oyo, Ondo, Bauchi, Borno, Anambra, Enugu, Akwa Ibom and Abuja.

“This dialysis centre will be the 27th in the series of our specialised medical intervention; Intensive Care Units, dialysis centres, cancer screening centres, Primary Health Centres donated by the Love Foundation,” he said.

He explained that the foundation had established intensive care centres in states including Lagos, Plateau, Ogun and Ondo.

He said, “Today we are dedicating this dialysis centre and decision to invest in establishment of dialysis centre all over the nation as part of the foundation’s initiative for the needy. We have 48,000 operating dialysis centres all over the nation and present in 197 nations of the world.’’

He lamented that the foundation had 225 centres of dialysis in the country, adding that yet the numbers could not address the problem of 220 million people in the country.

The Love Foundation is a charity arm of the RCCG involved in various intervention projects in the areas of Socials, Education, Health, Media, Business, Art and Culture, Governance and Sports.

He thanked Governor Umo Eno of Akwa Ibom for siting the dialysis centre in Eket in particular and Akwa Ibom at large.

Mr Eno who inaugurated the dialysis centre said that similar dialysis centres would be established in each of the 10 federal constituencies in the state.

“I am directing the Commissioner for Health, with critical stakeholders, to ensure they provide in each federal constituency in the state a dialysis centre.

“The commissioner should guarantee me that between now till June 2024, all the 10 dialysis centres will be ready because we need to ensure that we get the facilities across to our people who have to travel too far to do dialysis,” the governor said.

Mr Eno noted that his administration had invested heavily in Primary Health Centres, saying that for the additional centre being inaugurated, the state government had already approved workers to be deployed to Immanuel General Hospital.

He explained that the staff deployed to the hospital would be trained in the 10 federal constituencies in the state.

In his remarks, the state Commissioner for Health, Prof. Augustine Umoh, explained that one of the ways to manage kidney ailments was through dialysis.

He said that the state government had dialysis machines in Ibom Specialist Hospital in Uyo and General Hospital at Away in Onna LGA.

(NAN)