After nearly two decades of waiting by successive sets of the Department of Nursing, the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nige­ria (NMCN) has approved internship programme for Enugu State University of Science and Technology (ESUT) Teaching Hospital, Parklane, Enugu.

NMCN also approved in­dexing of nursing students at the Colleges of Nursing and the former School of Nursing, Awgu, recently also upgraded to College of Nursing.

The approvals were an­nounced by the Registrar of the Council, Dr. Faruk Umar Abubakar, when he led a delegation of the council’s accreditation team on a courtesy visit to Governor Peter Mbah at the Government House, Enugu, where he equally commended the Mbah ad­ministration for providing the requisite infrastructure at the Colleges of Nursing, Park Lane and Awgu to create a conducive envi­ronment for teaching and learning, while also paying attention to the welfare of health workers.

Dr. Abubakar announced the council’s approval for the immediate recruit­ment of 50 interns to work at Park Lane, noting that with the approval of the in­ternship programme, more graduate nurses would now be trained at the ESUT Uni­versity Teaching Hospital to boost the state’s nursing manpower.

“When you train nurses in Nigeria, they are special­ists in Midwifery, General Nursing and Public Health and the internship pro­gramme will strengthen the health sector,” he stated.

He equally lauded Gov­ernor Mbah for approving the implementation of the Consolidated Health Sala­ry Structure (CONHESS), which is the latest salary structure for nurses, not­ing that with such show of commitment, the state would be able to retain a lot of its nursing manpower as they qualify.

“Good salaries, provi­sion of infrastructure, pro­vision of human resourc­es, employment of quality nurses, will help reduce migration of nurses. So, I am very optimistic that with what you are doing in the state’s health sector, the environment will be so con­ducive and ‘japa syndrome’ will drastically reduce,” he added.

While thanking the NMCN for the approvals, Governor Mbah, who was represented by the Secre­tary to the State Govern­ment, Prof. Chidiebere Onyia, regretted the stagna­tion of the state’s nursing institutions for the past 19 years, noting, however, that his administration decided to wade in strongly through massive investment in the health and nursing space.

“We were clear from the outset that something con­sequential had to happen in the nursing space in terms of infrastructure, manpow­er training, remuneration, and motivation. We cannot possibly grow our econo­my from $4.4 billion to $30 billion if we do not get the health sector right.

“Let me also assure you that the gaps you have fur­ther identified will be given utmost attention. We will not play around with your recommendations,” he assured. ­

Meanwhile, throwing more light on the develop­ment, the Special Adviser to the Governor on Health Matters, Dr. Yomi Jaye, de­scribed the approvals as “a monumental breakthrough.

“You know this strug­gle started immediately the governor came into office and found out that there were lots of accred­itation gaps in the School of Nursing, among other healthcare institutions in the state.

“So, for 19 whole years that the NMCN had first sited the department of nursing, our student-nurs­es from ESUT were not indexed and they have not been writing professional examinations to qualify as nurses. One breakthrough now is the fact that as the registrar said right here, all of them are going to be indexed. All backlogs swill be cleared so that by next year, there won’t be any backlog. This is what had been standing for 19 years. So our young Ndi Enugu it’s exam time. Gov Peter Mbah has cleared the way.”

“With this breakthrough also, Park Lane is now up­graded as a College of Nurs­ing, Awgu is now accredited as a College of Nursing.

“We had 50 and we can now have 100. If we are able to do two batches, which they have agreed to do in the three schools, we will have 600 nurses. The gover­nor wants to be producing 3,000 nurses every year and he is committed to making sure that the nursing and other institutions are up­graded to world-class stan­dard,” Dr Jaye said.