The Lagos State Government has unveiled a mobile floating clinic to boost access to medical care and provide quick medical emergency response on the waterways. CHINYERE OKOROAFOR reports that this gesture will both expand access to emergency healthcare for water travellers as well as residents in riverine communities
As part of efforts to increase access to prompt, qualitative and efficient healthcare services on the waterways and riverine communities, the Lagos State Ministry of Health and the Lagos State Waterways Authority (LASWA) have unveiled a mobile medical care facility called ‘Floating Clinic Boat.’ The clinic boat, a floating medical treatment facility, is essentially for inland waterways medical emergency and riverine communities’ medical outreach services.
It is described as a Mono Hull Boat with 200HP x 2 capacity, made of fiberglass and equipped with four medical observation beds, a medium sterilisation unit, o2 bottle, gauge, infusion stand, and foldable stretcher and a fully kitted first aid box. The floating clinic boat is compartmentalised into four sections: the wheelhouse (for captain and crew), observation room (for patients), doctor’s office and nurses’ station, and reception. It also has marine safety equipment, including life jackets, fire buckets, life buoy, life rat fire extinguisher and nautical lights, and navigational equipment like Garmin ecomap, compass, VHF radio accessories and siren.
At the unveiling and inspection of the boat clinic, Permanent Secretary, Lagos State Ministry of Health, Dr Olusegun Ogboye, said the idea behind the floating clinic was to help provide first aid, medical emergency care and basic healthcare services at accident scenes on the inland waterways and riverine communities. He said: “The floating clinic mainly deals with emergencies on the waterways and provides outreach services to riverine communities. It is part of the initiative by the Ministry of Health to ensure that we extend our medical and ambulance service to the waterways, remote riverine communities and areas that can only be accessed by water. It is also an example of a partnership between different government agencies; the boat belongs to LASWA but will be operated by the Ministry of Health.”
Measles, COVID-19 vaccination to benefit
On June 15, Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu announced the commencement of the 2022 Integrated Measles Vaccination Campaign for children aged 9 to 59 months. He said about five million children were targeted during the 16-day campaign. Referencing this, Ogboye said the facility would be deployed for the ongoing integrated measles and COVID-19 vaccination campaign in riverine communities and waterways across the state, He added that it is part of a plan initiated by the Sanwo-Olu administration to ensure that emergency services in Lagos are ramped up to reduce response time.
His words: “This is a strong partnership between LASWA and the Ministry of Health. LASWA has provided the boat, the crew and the gas to run the boat; and the Ministry of Health will provide the human resources and medical consumables for health care provision. It is part of a plan that Mr. Governor has initiated to ensure that emergency services in Lagos are ramped up and that we can respond quickly to emergencies.
“This is the beginning of the initiative. There is an intention to expand, scale up and integrate our ambulance services; our ambulance boats, mobile intensive care units and transport ambulances. It is something that we have planned. That is why we are starting with one boat, and we are going to expand. It is a sustainable idea; we already run ambulance services, we are only expanding to include the waterways, and we have the human resources to run it.”
Personnel, modus operandi
The Permanent Secretary noted that there would be a minimum of two medical personnel on board the floating clinic who will run shifts at any time. He added that citizens in riverine communities could access the floating clinic by dialling the Lagos State Emergency numbers. “Once you contact the emergency numbers, the clinic will be deployed. LASWA can also deploy the clinic during an emergency response on the waterways. He said that if there is a call about an emergency on the waterways, remote and riverine areas, the emergency process will be activated.”
Speaking in the same vein, the General Manager, LASWA, Mr. Damilola Emmanuel, noted that the initiative would further add to the integrated emergency and rescue system being put in place by LASWA to ensure the safety of commuters and the well-being of citizens of riverine communities.
“As you know, for us at LASWA, we have been gradually building emergency and rescue efforts and slowly seeing how the safety on the waterways keeps improving year after year. This is just another initiative to further add to the integrated emergency and rescue system because we will have our core emergency and response boat in our jetties along with the soon-to-be-launched control room.
“If you noticed, I used the word integrated because apart from the floating clinic, which will be attending to emergencies, we are going to have the core emergency team, which will be made up of divers, boat captain and medics on the core rescue boat which LASWA will provide,” he said.
Also, the Senior Special Assistant to the Governor on Health, Dr Oreoluwa Finnih, stated that one of the core tasks of the floating clinic boat is medical outreach services to riverine communities to provide primary health care services. These include immunization, disease prevention and health promotion services to citizens. “Most people have the impression that Lagos is a completely urban city, but for us, we realise that Lagos has a lot of communities along the waterways which are not necessarily connected to the city. Mr. Governor, recognising this, has directed that medical services be taken to these areas as part of the mandate to achieve universal health coverage. When this initiative was brought to his attention, this was one of the factors that led to the quick acquisition of the boat to bridge the identified gap in health access,” she explained.
History of hospital ships and floating hospitals in other countries
Hospital ships possibly existed in ancient times. The Athenian Navy had a ship named Therapia, and the Roman Navy had a ship named Aesculapius, their names indicating that they may have been hospital ships. The earliest British hospital ship may have been the vessel named Goodwill, which accompanied a Royal Navy squadron in the Mediterranean in 1608 and was used to house the sick sent abroad from other ships. The Royal Navy institutionalised the use of hospital ships during the first half of the nineteenth century. Hospital ships were generally superior in their standard of service and sanitation to the medical provision available at the time for convalescent soldiers.
The first ships equipped with genuine medical facilities were steamships HMS Melbourne and HMS Mauritius, staffed by the Medical Staff Corps and providing services to the British expedition to China in 1860. In Africa, checks showed that there is no floating clinic in any African country except by a non-governmental organisation, Mercy Ships, which sails from one African country to another after months of docking with its floating hospital called Africa Mercy.
Africa Mercy is the world’s largest charitable floating hospital run by an international charity named Mercy Ships. It has five state-of-the-art operating rooms and advanced equipment to help make fast and accurate diagnoses. With eight decks, the floating hospital had five operating theatres with modern medical care, free of cost to patients who are often crippled, disfigured or blind. During the emergence of Covid-19, a UK cruise firm named Saga offered two ships as floating hospitals.
The owners of the two giant cruise ships offered them as floating hospitals to help deal with the coronavirus crisis. The luxury ships could provide space for more than 2,600 patients in separate cabins and have on-board medical facilities. They are the 37,000-tonne Saga Sapphire and the brand-new 58,000-tonne Spirit of Discovery, which docked in the Thames at Tilbury, Essex, this week.