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The Kogi State Government has procured Nigeria’s first hyperbaric oxygen treatment chamber to strengthen the state’s healthcare system.
Commissioner for Health, Dr Saka Haruna Audu, said the equipment would reduce medical tourism.
He said Nigeria is now the fifth African country with the sophisticated medical equipment.
Audu said: “This is great news for Nigerian patients who hitherto had to travel abroad for such diagnosis and treatments.
“Whoever has been following the trend of achievements in Kogi State Health Sector must have seen the purposeful move to turn the state to a choice destination for health tourism.
“This was made possible by the determination of His Excellency Alhaji Yahaya Bello, to revamp the state’s health sector and change the old narrative of a moribund sector that supervised substandard services.”
The health commissioner believes the equipment can help in healing people with both internal and external life-threatening injuries as well as health complications.
They include air or gas embolism, brain and sinus infections, necrotizing soft tissue infections, arterial insufficiency or low blood flow in the arteries, radiation injury, especially as a result of cancer treatment, anaemia, osteomyelitis, gas gangrene, carbon monoxide poisoning, burns and skin grafts.
“HBOT is becoming increasingly popular and mostly used as adjuvant therapy to conventional treatment/management of some life-threatening conditions to minimise healing times,” he added.
Commissioner for Information and Communications, Mr Kingsley Fanwo, said the equipment is part of the many facilities to feed the ongoing health projects in the state.
