The Federal Medical Centre, Ido-Ekiti in Ido/Osi Local Government Area of Ekiti State has received approval from the Federal Ministry of Health to operate community dental practice in communities in Ekiti State.

To this end, the management of the hospital led by Dr. Lawrence Ayodele, has opened a centre in Ise-Ekiti to kick-start the programme with a view to opening more in the near future.

Dr Ayodele, while speaking with Community News in Ido-Ekiti recently, explained that the vision of the community dental centres was to bring quality health care delivery to the people, saying the initiative “is primarily targeted at benefiting the rural dwellers.”

Ayodele, who is the hospital’s Chief   Medical Director, said “the initiative was part of the way through which the hospital intends to reach the rural dwellers and it was achieved owing to the lofty height the service of the tertiary hospital in Ekiti State has reached within a relatively short time it began operation.”

Speaking on the  new School of Nursing of the FMC, Ido, established barely a year ago, Dr Ayodele expressed pleasure at the growth achieved by the school, but denied allegations that the  institution had been engaging in admission and examination fraud.

According to him, the principal and management of the institution had been working in tandem with the management of the FMC and had been adhering strictly to the laid down rules of the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria, which pegged its admission quota at 50 students per session.

He said out of the 180 pioneer students of the school, only 50 would be indexed by the Nursing and Midwifery Council, describing this as the convention in Nigeria.

He threatened to wield the big stick against any lecturer in the School of Nursing that engages in any act that could portray the institution in bad light and charged the people of the state to cooperate with the institution to achieve its set objectives.

To achieve some of the objectives, Dr Ayodele said the FMC, Ido-Ekiti management had set-up two committees to oversee the affairs of hospital’s outreach centres spread to other communities across the three senatorial districts of the state, as well as the School of Nursing.