Filiya Community in Shongom Local Government Area of Gombe State which has been devastated by the prevalence of TB, HIV and Hepatitis will soon get a reprieve as the state government has indicated an interest in upgrading the only PHC in the community to a cottage hospital.
The indication was given by the State Commissioner of Health, Dr Habu Dahiru, who announced that the State Governor, Muhammad Inuwa Yahaya had earlier this year directed that the facility be considered for upgrade to a cottage hospital which the Ministry is following all procedures to make it a reality.
The Commissioner said that the Ministry was not aware that such cases were at an alarming rate to have become an outbreak as the number based on records was a normal situation.
He said that the Ministry has an official system of getting weekly and monthly records of incidences of diseases through its DSNO.
According to him, “I will set an investigative team to visit the community and facility immediately. When we discover these diseases are in a proportion that is not normal through the taking of samples, verification, a report action will be taken immediately.”
Habu Dahiru also stated that the state government was doing all its best to give the people of the state the best in terms of healthcare delivery which is the reason it was able to reactivate at least one PHC facility in all the 214 wards of the state adding that more reforms in the health sector are on the way.
Meanwhile, a recent visit to Filiya by our correspondent revealed that the rural town has been bedevilled with an upsurge of cases of hepatitis, tuberculosis and HIV for the past few years.
Filiya is a border town with Karim Lamido LGA of Taraba State and Alkaleri LGA of Bauchi State and both have witnessed high business and mining activities in the past few years making the people troupe into Filiya for medical attention making the PHC in Filiya to be overstretched.
During the visit to the community and the facility, our correspondent also learnt that an NGO which used to run free hepatitis tests in the facility had stopped since last year.
It was gathered that within a month, they used to carry out 50 to 100 tests with a high number of positive cases just as Our correspondent also learnt that there was an increase in the number of tuberculosis cases.
According to the discovery, for December 2020 alone, six cases of tuberculosis were recorded while 261 cases were recorded from January to June 2021.
For cases that were assumed, our correspondent gathered that there were 281 cases for 2020 while 308 cases had so far been assumed for 2021 already.
In the case of HIV, investigation revealed that as at the time of the visit, the facility was managing 1,801 cases and the majority of the people come from border villages of Karim Lamido LGA in Taraba State as well as border villages from Alkaleri LGA of Bauchi State.
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