The Bauchi State Deputy Governor, Rt Hon Muhammad Awwal Jatau, on Tuesday, at the Government House, commissioned 20 digitalised multifunctional ultrasound machines and 73 shock garments worth about ₦625m for distribution to secondary and primary health facilities across the state.
Speaking while commissioning the equipment, the Deputy Governor assured that, with the development, maternal and child health would receive more attention across the state.
According to him, “Our administration is committed to ensuring easy access to quality and health standardized healthcare service delivery, particularly women and children health. Because when those are adequately taken care of, the burden is less.”
He further assured that the administration would continue to partner with donor agencies and international development partners to receive support to improve the services.
In his remarks, the Executive Chairman of the Bauchi State Primary Healthcare Board, Dr Rilwanu Mohammed, explained that the items were procured in 2025 but could not be distributed to the health facilities due to logistics problems, which have been cleared.
He assured that, with the commissioning by the Deputy Governor, the equipment would be distributed to the facilities immediately so that they could be put to use.
Also speaking, the Project Focal Person, Dr Adamu Mohammed, said, “We are witnessing the commissioning of some items procured by the IMPACT project. They are 20 4D ultrasound scanning machines. These 4D ultrasound scanning machines, are latest ultrasound equipment you can see anywhere in the world.”
According to him, “They can provide a lot of functions, as they can do any emergency surgical scanning, especially abdomen, pelvis. They can do obstetric scanning for pregnancy to identify where the baby is lying, the number of babies, the position, the placenta. They will be able to do that. One can also do transvaginal, transabdominal ultrasound scan with this.”
He added, “The machines can do echocardiography with this scanning machines. One can do Doppler scanning with this machine. And because it’s 4D, one will be able, once they are doing the scanning, will be able to turn any organ that one is looking 360 degrees to be able to look at all the different positions and angles. So it will be able to give more accurate diagnosis while doing the scanning.”
Mohammed added that, “And it was procured with the support of World Bank project, and it will be distributed to all the 20 General Hospitals in the state. And as part of the interventions of what the IMPACT project is doing, with these distributions, we are targeting that we will support the facilities to provide free scanning machines in the next three months. We will be targeting about 30,000 pregnant women to benefit as an immediate benefit to the people of Bauchi State with these scanning machines.”
He revealed that, “So these scanning machines that you are seeing, they cost foremost N600m, used to actually procure those equipment. So apart from these ultrasound scanning machines, we are also distributing anti-shock garments, about 73 in number at the sum of N25m, to high-volume primary care centers.”
He explained that, “The anti-shock garments actually is a strategy that is used to prevent continuous bleeding in pregnant women. When a woman encountered postpartum hemorrhage and she is in Primary Healthcare centers, and they realize that the bleeding is beyond what they will handle, they will actually put that anti-shock garment for her, and it will actually temporarily stop the bleeding, and it will prevent her from going into shock.”
He added that, “And then she will now be transported together with the anti-shock garment into the nearby General Hospitals . From there, where she will be able to receive all the care she needs, and the anti-shock garment can be removed and washed and then returned for further use because it’s a reusable commodity to be used.”
He also disclosed that 73 health facilities would benefit from the equipment, all of them high-volume primary healthcare centres.
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