Dogara Settles Patients’ Medical Bills On Visit To ATBUTH

BY AMOS DUNIA, ABUJA – Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon Yakubu Dogara on Friday, visited Abubakar Tafawa Balewa Teaching Hospital (ATBUTH), Bauchi, during which he paid medical bills of patients running into millions.
Dogara, who was accompanied by Senators Suleiman Nazif, Ali Wakili and over 50 members of the House of Representatives from across the country, empathised with patients in different wards in the 700-bed hospital.
He explained that the purpose of his visit to the hospital was to extend support to people in need, especially in the face of the economic recession the country is going through and as part of his free medical outreach to his people which he started last year.
The Speaker, who also used the opportunity to assess the facilities in the institution, told the management of the hospital after a tour of the hospital wards, that health is very important.
According to him; “It has been said by those who can speak very well that health is wealth. As a matter of fact, if you put money in the hands of a sick person, the money diminishes, so it means health is the foundation of wealth itself. So, that is why we decided that this will be our first port of call. Not because of anything, but because of the situation we are in as a country, coupled with the fact that we are just smarting out of a very biting recession.
“We know the condition in which most of the patients will be in and if you recall, just last year I had cause to send a team of medical doctors who stayed here for over a week in order to attend to the health needs and challenges of people across Bauchi State. And we had people  Kano, Yobe, from the report I got, and Gombe, Plateau and other neigbouring states. Thousands of operations were successfully carried out.
“So it in that spirit that we came here again, realising that health is wealth and the fact that the bulk of the people who are here, really, constitute our support base as a party, so it became absolutely necessary for us to pay this visit so that we can assess the facilities here and the working condition in this institute.
“I’m happy also to announce that in view of the fact that we are putting a lot of priority on health, I was able to secure some level of funding for this institution and Federal Medical Centre, Azare, which are the only federal institutions that we have. I summoned the two chief medical officers,  we mer in my office in Abuja. I have handed over the allocations to them. It is now up to them to decide which critical areas they will use the money to intervene and we are waiting for them so that as soon as possible, the projects in Federal Medical Centre, Azare, and ATBU teaching hospital will be executed.”
Moved by the plight of some patients he met and interacted with in the wards during his tour, the Speaker pledged to personally offset the bills of five patients which stood at N1, 266,600m. This is in addition to N2.5m which the members of the National Assembly and members of the Speaker’s contigent donated to offset other bills of patients at the hospital.