The Ondo State government has announced its plan to establish a specialised medical science university to actualise its achievements in the health sector and stop the emigration of experienced scientists from the state.
The state Commissioner for Information, Kayode Akinmade, said the varsity would be named the Ondo State University of Medical Sciences.
Akinmade spoke during a working tour of the Ondo Medical Village in Ondo town.
He said the university would build on the platforms already created by the government to ensure the development of qualitative health care system in the state.
He said the institution, when established, would halt the brain drain being experienced in the health sector through the production of top quality health professionals to effectively run the various hospitals in the state.
Ondo State is said to be the only state in the South-West without a telaching hospital.
Akinmade said the establishment of a medical science university would halt constant exit of health workers seeking to explore further career opportunities within and outside the country and that the proposed medical school would replicate the Mother and Child hospitals across the state.
The institution is also expected to make provision of an institutional-base acquisition of academic, professional and technological knowledge needed for manpower development in technology and basic applied sciences.
The commissioner explained that at the beginning of the Governor Olusegun Mimiko administration, basic health indices of the state were considered the worst in the entire South-West due to the relatively high rate of maternal mortality and morbidity.
Akinmade said the administration immediately responded by initiating ambitious health care development programmes aimed at reducing the burden of diseases and mortality among the people of the state
He listed as part of the state’s health schemes the Abiye Safe Motherhood initiative, which seeks to provide free access to quality health care services for pregnant women and children less than five years of age as well as the famous Mother and Child hospitals in the state.
He also said that the government had established trauma and surgical centres to handle critical trauma and burns cases.