The Edo government says it plans to use equity funds from the state Health Insurance Scheme to offset bills of indigent patients at the University of Benin Teaching Hospital (UBTH).
Gov. Godwin Obaseki said this while receiving the UBTH Chief Medical Director(CMD), Prof. Darlington Obaseki, on a courtesy visit at Edo Government House, Benin.
“We have no choice but to support you because your success is our success. So in terms of roads rehabilitation in your hospital we are coming straight to it, we don’t have the enough but we will do it.
“I will talk to Edo Healthcare Insurance Scheme so that we can make funds available from the equity funds to that we can offset the bills of the poorest of the poor who can pay for the qualities of services you offered them.
“For us, we are grateful that we have UBTH here in the state, very few states can boost of this in the country and we are not ashamed, you had helped us to do things professionally, we are not afraid to put out our data, the data we put out in Edo can stand the test of time anywhere in the world.
“If we didn’t have UBTH how will we have had the resources to do what we are doing, it is as if we knew there was a pandemic that was going to come. Because I just wonder if we haven’t started this process of reforms, where will we be today,” Obaseki said.
Earlier, the CMD said that the visit was to inform the governor that he has been reappointed by President Muhammadu Buhari for a second term in office.
He said that he was very happy and excited with the way and manner the reappointment came which, saying it was based on hard work.
He, however, appealed to the governor to assist in defraying the treatment of some indigent patients as the cost was running into billions.(NAN)
