Blessing Ibunge in Port Harcourt

The United Nations Child Education Fund (UNICEF) and its partner, IHS Nigeria, has expressed satisfaction that the recently donated Oxygen Plant at the Eleme General Hospital, in Rivers State, is helping to bridge health gap in the state and its environs.

Officials of the UNICEF and  IHS Nigeria officials made this observation when they visited  the plant located at the general hospital in Eleme, Eleme Local Government Area of the State.

During the handover of the plant to the Rivers State Government last year, it was revealed that the facility has the capacity to produce 123 cylinders and 720,000 litres of oxygen every 24 hours.

The plant, as it was learnt, was built under a Public-Private Partnership involving UNICEF, the Canadian Government, IHS, and the Rivers State Ministry of Health through the State Hospital Management Board.

Speaking during the visit to the facility, the Director of Sustainability at IHS Nigeria, Titilope Oguntuga, noted that the oxygen plant has saved lives and is helping to bridge health gaps in the eight other states where similar plants are located.

She further explained that the visit reflected the organisation’s commitment “not only to create opportunities for impact but also to continue supporting beneficiaries by monitoring many of our interventions.”

“This plant is one of the nine oxygen plants we have built across the federation,” she said. “We are particularly excited that it is helping to bridge health gaps—not just in Rivers State and its environs, but also in all the states where the plants are currently located.”

Oguntuga informed that in terms of sustainability “we focus our intervention sustainability on four pillars; ethics and governance, education and economic growth, environment and climate change and finally, people and communities.” 

She added: “The visit to the Port Harcourt oxygen plant is to have an assessment on how well the plant is functioning, the impact it is currently making and to generally understand how the operations is going.” 

In his part, Chief of UNICEF Field Office, Port Harcourt, Dr Anslem Audu, expressed that with the commissioning of the Eleme plant, the Rivers State government went into action, saying that the plant has been very functional and useful to the people of Rivers State. 

Audu continued that “The era of lack of oxygen is no longer there. You can practically visit any of the hospitals in Port Harcourt and find out that they have oxygen and the product is from this plant all thanks to IHS, the Canadian Government and UNICEF.”

The UNICEF field officer, who confirmed that the plant is functional, said it is working and producing enough oxygen for the state. He said: “We are looking forward to other states even coming to access this product.”

“The partnership within these three organizations and the Ministry of Health in Rivers State has really worked and we are reaping the benefits of the partnership.” 

He explained that “During the COVID era, a lot of patients needed oxygen and oxygen was not available. So many children will come down with pneumonia and it will become an emergency, they will need oxygen, they are in a hospital that oxygen is not available. But with this plant now available no child will die as a result of lack of oxygen in the hospital.”

He urged the implementing partners, especially the government to also invest for the sustainability of the facility by providing source of electricity for the plant to be much more functional. 

Earlier, the Medical Director, Eleme General Hospital, Dr Leechi-Okere Clarabelle, noted that since the day of unveiling, the plant has been functioning very well.

Dr Leechi-Okere expressed: “We’ve had success stories whereby oxygen is distributed to public hospitals in the state, including the two teaching hospitals in the state and then we have also extended distribution to some private hospitals within the state.” 

“We have two hubs where we store the oxygen because of the location of the plant. We produce here and store somewhere in Port Harcourt so that people who because of the distance, can get oxygen from those hubs. So we have those hubs that serve as our storage and distribution sites.”

Speaking on the challenges faced so far, the medical director said: “The major challenges are the high cost of production because the oxygen plant run solely on diesel generator. So the cost of diesel to run the plant is quite expensive.” 

“We are not connected to the national grid so we don’t have any alternative source of power. Another challenge is the cost of distribution to those hubs is also increasing the cost of the oxygen,” she added.

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