The Japanese government, through its Embassy in Nigeria, is expanding its medical interventions in Enugu State by setting up mega incinerators to manage medical waste at 26 primary health facilities and private hospitals in the Enugu East Local Government Area of the state.
Grassroots Human Security Project (GGP) Coordinator at the Embassy of Japan in Nigeria, Wakana Deguchi, led a delegation from the embassy to assess the Abakpa General Hospital site for the project.
Deguchi, who paid a visit to the State Commissioner of Health, Dr Ike Obi, was also at the Paully General Hospital, where the Embassy intervened in the provision of power supply by installing a 56 KVA facility comprising 96 panels, making the hospital independent of public power facilities to date.
The Incinerators project which the Embassy would be implementing with the South Saharan Social Development Organisation (SSDO) would reduce the difficulty health facilities face as they had to travel several distances to the Enugu Cold store to be incinerated.
Speaking shortly after the tour, Head of Program, South Saharan Social Development Organisation (SSDO), Udochukwu Egwim, disclosed that the Abakpa General hospital was chosen to host the project following the high volume of patients, its centralised location, as well as the 26 primary health centres and other private facilities in the area.
“Each of the medical centres in the local government transports its medical waste to the medical store to be incinerated. Now we are planning another point where they can bring those things down. The private and public facilities can pay a token to run the facility”, he stated
Regarding the involvement of the SSDO in the project, he stated that the organisation won a grant from the Japanese Embassy’s small grants program in 2020, which resulted in the solarisation of the Paully hospital. The installation included a 56 KVA facility with 96 panels, making the hospital totally independent of public facilities to date.
Stressing that the project was completed in 2021, he added that they got a letter from the Embassy asking them to apply for another grant.
“Now this time, we didn’t want to do solar. We wanted to have a kind of NEEDS assessment; we had meetings with leadership of the healthcare agencies in the state and they identified three possible facilities – Abakpa, Uwani and Agbani and Awgu general hospitals. Out of those facilities, we found out that they have a low volume of patients, and that prompted us to start looking at other areas. So we identified there and felt that an incinerator would be a better fit than the solar power, which we had done before,” Egwim stated.