The Akwa Ibom State Chairman of the National Association of Nigerian Nurses and Midwives, Patrick Odu, has said some of the health centres promised by the Federal Government for revitalisation were not working.

Odu, in an interview with The PUNCH, said some of them had either been converted to church premises or had long been abandoned.

Odu said, “The primary health centres you are talking about are not working. The one in the Oron Local Government Area has been converted to a church. The last time I passed through the area, it was one church that was operating there.

“The one in the Urue-Offong/Oruko Local Government Area has long been abandoned in the bush. They are scattered and I cannot give you details of how they are in the state.”

He, however, said that the state government’s primary health centres were working in almost all the 31 local government areas of the state except a few with a few managerial and manpower issues.

The Federal Government had, in 2017, begun the National Primary Healthcare Revitalisation Initiative with the aim of resuscitating over 10,000 health centres across the country

Two years after the Federal Government’s promise to revitalise 10,000 primary healthcare centres across the country, many states have said they are still awaiting the central government’s intervention.