The Mai Mala Buni administration in Yobe has sponsored over 50,000 free dialysis for patients suffering from renal diseases in the last five years.

Baba Goni, the chief medical director of the Yobe Teaching Hospital, Damaturu, disclosed this in Damaturu, the state capital.

Mr Goni, who toured the journalists through the newly completed maternal, newborn, and child healthcare complex, said over 600 free dialysis sessions were being conducted monthly in the hospital.

He said each session cost about N50,000 due to the exorbitant prices of consumables.

Mr Goni said Mr Buni’s administration also set up a dialysis centre in the hospital to attend to the high burden of kidney failure, particularly among communities on the fringes of the River Yobe.

He said the governor increased the standing payment for hemodialysis by 100 per cent to provide succour to indigent patients.

Mr Goni said the state government was also providing free vascular access operations, a preliminary process for dialysis that costs between N100,000 and N150,000 per session.

He recalled that Mr Buni, during a visit to the United Kingdom in 2023, invited world-renowned experts to help the state identify the remote and immediate causes of the high manifestation of renal diseases.

“We have already done preliminary work on that and carried out a survey and identified hot spots in some local government areas in the northern part of the state.

“Soon, we are going to conduct a population-based survey in the hot spots. We will analyse blood samples of members of the communities and the soil and water they consume to see if there are toxins that can affect kidneys,” he said.

According to Mr Goni, the state government is working with the Urology/Nephrology Centre at Mansoura University in Egypt to train doctors in Yobe in kidney transplantation.

He said kidney transplants locally would save money as the expenditure for the procedure abroad exceeded N20 million, adding that the 400-bed capacity maternal, newborn and child healthcare complex built by the Buni administration was the biggest in the North-East.

Mr Buni, in 2020, awarded a N1.6 billion contract for the construction of the state-of-the-art facility.

(NAN)