The University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital (UMTH) and the International Committee of the Red,Cross (ICRC) are jointly constructing a 1.3 billion Naira (3.5 million dollars) Physical Rehabilitation Centre (PRC) at the hospital premises.
The centre is to cater for the multitude of orthopaedic and other related patients mainly as a result of the Boko Haram insurgency.
The UMTH has offered a 6,000 sq metre piece of land for the PRC while the ICRC donates the 1.3 billion Naira for its construction and equipping.
The PRC, which is envisaged to open for services by mid 2020, will comprise offices, clinical area, workshop, gait training area, storage rooms, casting rooms and dormitory.
The centre, which is to serve the insurgency-troubled Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states, as well as other neighboring states, is expected to serve an approximated 2,000 patients yearly.
“The centre, which is one of the few in Africa, will also have a manufacturing component where most of the prosthetics it requires will be produced,” the Chief Medical Director of the hospital, Professor Ahmed Ahidjo, said at its groundbreaking ceremony yesterday in Maiduguri.
The Head of the ICRC Sub-delegation in Maiduguri, Markus Folder, said the centre is the product of an UNTH/ICRC Memorandum of Understanding following the need to halt the difficulties being suffered and costs incurred in carrying patients to the National Orthopaedic Hospital, Dala, Kano.
The Chairman of the UMTH Board, Alhaji Hadi Ukashatu Gumel, while thanking the ICRC for the 3.5 million dollars donation for the project, called on wealthy individuals to donate towards the development of healthcare in the Northeast.
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