The Federal Capital Territory Administration has equipped 12 hospitals with modern equipment for the treatment of hypertension in the FCT.
The FCT Minister, Senator Bala Mohammed, who said this during the 2013 FCT World Health Day Celebration on Friday, added that his administration had rejuvenated the Primary Health Care Centres to confront the disease in the council.
Mohammed, represented by the Secretary of Health & Human Services, Dr. Ademola Onakomaiya, also directed the council's Health and Human Services secretariat to create awareness so that residents could avail themselves of the opportunity to lead a better life by controlling their blood pressure and getting medical attention when necessary.
The minister said, "Services had been scaled-up greatly in the Primary Health Care Centres in all the six councils in the Federal Capital Territory to effectively combat the disease. As part of the Transformation Agenda of Mr. President, qualitative health care delivery is critical to bring about economic growth in the country of which the FCTA has substantially keyed into."
He stated that the World Health Organisation had identified hypertension as the most important preventable risk factor for premature death, and lamented that it remained undiagnosed until life-threatening complications set in, thereby making it difficult to control at that stage.
Onakomaiya, represented by Director Medical Diagnostics, Dr. Benjamin Udofia, said non-communicable diseases like hypertension had in the recent years, posed great health challenges across the world.
Meanwhile, the Asokoro hospital now has a monthly record of 15,000 patients, Onakomaiya has said.
The hospital also recorded 2,520 deliveries in 2012 out of which 729 were through caesarean sections.
A statement on Sunday by the Head, Public Relations Unit of HHSS, Mr. Badaru Yakassai, said Onakomaiya gave the figures when the Director-General of the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies in Kuru, Jos, Prof. Mohammed Bande-led Senior Executive Course 35 of NIPSS on a study tour of the hospital.
