The Oyo government has urged residents, especially rural dwellers, to access quality and affordable healthcare through functional primary healthcare centre facilities.

While launching the maintenance manual for the facilities in Ibadan, the health commissioner, Bode Ladipo, said the government had put in resources to facilitate the upgrade of the PHCs.

He said the step’s essence was to ensure that each political ward has a viable healthcare centre.

Mr Ladipo noted that about 210 PHCs were renovated during Governor Seyi Makinde’s first tenure, adding that other PHCs would be completed to make up the remaining 351 PHCs.

The commissioner said the government had started looking inward to shore up resources to meet practitioners’ needs. Mr Ladipo reiterated the commitment of the government to maintain all the healthcare facilities in Oyo.

He said there was a need to ensure the facilities were put together to outlast the present administration.

Mr Ladipo said, “For this reason, the Oyo state government put a small manual together for the maintenance of the new facilities.”

Funmi Salami, the special adviser to the governor on health, said the maintenance handbook was vital as a good maintenance culture would extend the life of the infrastructure.

Ms Salami reiterated the state government’s commitment to delivering its mandate of quality healthcare to all state citizens through the renovation of 351 primary healthcare centres (one PHC per ward) across the state to category III PHCs.

According to her, a category III PHC has about 13 rooms with potable water and electricity.

(NAN)