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Dr. (Mrs.) Mimmie Oseji, permanent Secretart, Delta State Ministry of Health, left, Dr. Onome Ogueh, middle, and one other in the auditorium of DELSUTH, Oghara.

By Donald Ojebo

Delta State University Teaching Hospital (DELSUTH), Oghara has been categorised as a centre for multi-national research for the treatment of people with COIVD-19.

The hospital’s Chief Medical Director (CMD), Dr. Onome Ogueh made this known during a meeting with Medical Consultants of the institution had with the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Health, Dr. (Mrs.) Minnie Oseji in the main Auditorium of the institution.

Ogueh in answer to a question on efforts to make DELSUTH gain international support said the Nigeria Institute of Medical Research in collaboration with Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia and New York University has identified DELSUTH as a centre for multi-national research for the treatment of people with COIVD-19.

The permanent secretary had charged the Management of DELSUTH to work together as a team to make the hospital take its rightful place as an institution that delivers first class services to patients.

She said the essence of the meeting was to sensitize management on plans by the Ministry aimed at boosting the capacity of personnel, making additional services available and improving the overall quality of services being rendered by the hospital.

“World class excellent care is not the building but the professional, so if we have the passion to bring innovation, go the extra mile to make wonderful things happen in this place it would work whether the buildings are painted or not as we know the Governor is doing his best,” Oseji said.

On Public-Private Partnership aimed to improve services, Dr. Oseji encouraged the Medical Consultants to be realistic in their negotiations with public private partners to ensure that agreements are mutually beneficial.

Oseji later inspected the extent of progress at the on-going renovation of the Clinical building and the 80 bed ward in the Teaching Hospital. She was conducted round the project sites by the Chief Medical Director and the Chairman, Medical Advisory Committee.

On her assessment of work carried out so far she expressed pleasure that the 80 bedded ward was virtually completed. As for the clinical building she said, “I believe progress has been made but the there is still a lot to be done and what is required is effective monitoring to ensure that whatever is due the contractor are promptly provided so that they can meet certain timelines as to the renovation work.

“As it is, there has been an undue delay because of a lot of factors beyond our control as the COVID-19 created some problems but that has been abated now and we believe that we can fast track the completion of this project so that the service delivery, the teaching and the research for which it was established can be properly implemented”.

On his part, Dr. Ogueh said that the project when fully completed would no doubt transform how the hospital would effectively carry out its mandate as it concerns teaching, research and clinical services.

“For instance, like the oxygen plant is going to be revamped, we will have piped oxygen and we will then be able to completely deal with patients who have serious problems, our Intensive Care Unit (ICU) will become what an ICU really should be.

“It will mean that we have more patients, more facilities to also train our medical students and our post graduate doctors and more facilities to do more research, so it will really make a huge difference,” he disclosed.