Edo shuts 20 ‘sub-standard’ health facilities

Edo State Health Regulatory and Monitoring Agency, (EDOHERMA) has sealed up 20 health facilities over inability to meet stipulated health standards in the state.

The action, according to Chief Executive Officer of EDOHERMA, Dr. Adesuwa Urhoghide-Edigin, was part of Governor Monday Okpebholo plans to sanitise the health sector.

Urhoghide-Edigin explained that shutting down the health facilities was not to witch-hunt or punish health facility operators but to ensure compliance as well as protect patients.

She said some of the sealed facilities were not registered with the Edo State Government while those that obtained registration failed to maintain the standards under which they were initially registered.

The EDOHERMA boss said the body would beam searchlight on orphanages, shelters, public secondary hospitals and primary healthcare centres.

She said Governor Okpebholo was committed to ensuring that Edo residents have access to healthcare facilities that meet approved standards.

Urhoghide-Edigin said any facility that refused to upgrade or persistently operate below approved standards would face permanent closure, while defaulters would be made to pay fine.

She stated that the aim was to ensure health practitioners in the state stick to their scope of service while health facilities operate within their operational license.

" A clinic runs only for 12 hours. Hospitals run for 24 hours. So if we see a clinic running for 24 hours, that clinic has exceeded its scope of service.

“Even in the sealing we have been doing, we are also encouraging such facilities to know that we are not all punitive and that we are also supportive. Some are doing what we have already asked them to do and, when they finish, we are also going to come back to the public to say which facility has done better.

“We are going to close permanently those that fail to upgrade their health standard,” she declared, stressing that enforcement would be balanced with support for operators willing to comply.

“Some of these facilities, there are no doctors there, and that cannot be a hospital. What we are trying to do is for everybody to stick to their scope of services.

“It is either you are standard or not, and that is where our categorisation comes in.  The ultimate objective is to protect patients and improve healthcare delivery across the state."