The Kogi state government has purchased the first hospital based Hyperbaric Oxygen Treatment (HBOT) chamber in Nigeria, a facility service that could only be got on treatment abroad.
Dr Saka Audu, the Kogi Commissioner for Health, disclosed this in a statement on Friday in Lokoja.
He explained that the purchase made Nigeria the fifth country in Africa to boast of such sophisticated medical equipment.
Audu also stated that it was part of Gov. Yahaya Bello’s commitments to revamping the health sector by brining World best health care and services to Nigeria through the state.
With this and many more state of the art health services underway, Audu said that Kogi State would be the next destination for best medical services in Nigeria and health tourism.
“This is great news for Nigerian patients who hitherto had to travel abroad for such treatments.
“Whoever has been following the trend of achievements in Kogi State Health Sector must have now seen the purposeful move to turn the State to a choice destination for health tourism.
“This is only possible with much thanks to the determination of His Excellency, Yahaya Bello, to revamp the State’s Health sector and change the old narrative of a moribund sector that supervised substandard services.
“HBOT chamber is very useful equipment that can help in healing people with both internal and external life threatening injuries as well as in health complications like air or gas embolism, brain and sinus infections.
“Others are necrotizing soft tissue infections, arterial insufficiency or low blood flow in the arteries, radiation injury especially as a result of cancer treatment, anemia, osteomyelitis, gas gangrene, carbon monoxide poisoning, burns, skin grafts, among others.
“HBOT is becoming increasingly popular and mostly used as adjuvant therapy to conventional treatment/management of some life threatening conditions to minimise healing times,” Audu said.
