The Yobe State government spends about N360 million annually to provide free dialysis services at the Yobe State University Teaching Hospital (YSUTH), Damaturu, the hospital’s Chief Medical Director, Baba Goni, has said. Mr Goni said the hospital conducts between 600 and 700 free haemodialysis sessions every month under the programme, which has been running since 2017. He disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Damaturu on Thursday.
According to him, the hospital spends N30 million monthly on the programme. “In dialysis, you don’t count the number of patients because one patient can have two or three sessions in a week,” he said.
“The cost of dialysis per session in other teaching hospitals is about N50,000, excluding the cost of drugs, laboratory investigation and admission where necessary.” Mr Goni said the state government had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with a reputable company supplying dialysis consumables to ensure that the treatment was sustained. He said the hospital also performed free fistula surgeries to have “vascular access” to patients with Chronic Kidney Disease.
According to him, vascular surgeons are usually invited to conduct the procedure on patients while the hospital pays for the services and purchases the required consumables. The CMD said a water treatment plant and five additional dialysis machines were recently procured, bringing the total number of functional dialysis machines at the facility to 11.
Mr Goni said that plans had reached an advanced stage to establish another dialysis centre at the Specialists’ Hospital, Gashua, the epicentre of kidney disease in the state. He said the proposed dialysis centre in Gashua was captured in the 2026 budget to justify the commitment of the state government to the project aimed at easing the suffering of the people.