Abandoned and Forgotten: Plateau community suffers as health facility lies in ruins

Grace Joseph’s labour pains began at 9 a.m. on a quiet morning in the Tan-Jol area of Plateau State earlier this year. With each passing hour, the discomfort grew more intense.

However, while enduring the pain, what was more prominent in her mind was the uncertainty of where she would deliver her child. In Tan-Jol, a village in Riyom Local Government Area (LGA) of Plateau State, there is no health facility or midwife.

By midday, her husband had left in search of a neighbour who had a car — their only hope of reaching the nearest clinic in Vwak-Jol, a 10-kilometre journey over rough, unpaved roads.

“He (the neighbour) drove us to the clinic in Vwak but they said they couldn’t handle it,” she narrated.

The clinic, a repurposed church, lacked the necessary equipment for complicated deliveries. The staff suggested they head for Vom Christian Hospital, a bigger facility another 30 kilometres away in nearby Jos South LGA.

The PHC clinic in Vwak

The road to Vom had seen better days. The bumps on the path matched the mounting anxiety in the car. When they arrived, doctors assessed her and shook their heads.

Vom Christian Hospital was not equipped for her case either. It was too late in the day to risk travelling the additional hour and a half to the Plateau State Specialist Hospital in Jos, the state capital. So Mrs Joseph, along with her husband and the neighbour who had become their chauffeur, had no choice but to return home and try again the next day.

She delivered the baby at the state specialist hospital the following morning but the baby did not survive.

“The doctors said the baby had suffered from exhaustion due to the prolonged labour,” she recounted with sadness.

Mrs Joseph, her husband and the neighbour had done everything they could, but the distance, the delays, and the lack of a functioning health facility close to home had stolen her child from her arms. Her case thus adds to the gruelling statistics on infant mortality in Nigeria, where about 54 babies die per 1,000 live births.

However, in Tan-Jol, Mrs Joseph’s story is not unique.

“Most times when a woman gets into labour, the family has to look for someone who has a bike or a car to take them to the clinic in Vwak, and when it’s in the night, the pregnant woman is taken to the house of a woman who owns a chemist in the community and in most cases she doesn’t accept it due to fear of complications that may occur and lead to death,” said Deborah Alfred, a resident of the community. “In situations like that, the woman and her family are left with no other choice than to go back and deliver at home and only pray for a safe delivery.”

View of the abandoned clinic in Tan-Jol

In Tan-Jol, where an unfinished and abandoned clinic stands as a stark symbol of neglect, countless women face the same harrowing journey when it’s time to give birth. Like Mrs Joseph, pregnant women and their families endure long, treacherous rides across kilometres of countryside in search of healthcare that should exist within their community.

Often, it’s too late by the time they reach help. Mothers lose babies and families lose mothers — largely because a health centre that should have been completed over two decades ago remains a shell of a promise, crumbling and overtaken by weeds.

Built for their well-being, left to rot

The abandoned health centre, which was started over 20 years ago by Emmanuel Jugu, a former member of the state House of Assembly, was supposed to serve as the community’s beacon of hope.

The building was roofed in 2004, but work stopped, leaving it unfinished, a constant reminder of broken promises. Though the Plateau State government allocated ₦9.5 million in 2021 to complete the project under the supervision of the Plateau State Primary Health Care Development Agency, there is no sign of progress. A review of the state’s budgetary allocations since 2017 reveals that there has been no additional funding designated for the project.

The partly constructed building now stands as a monument to broken promises. Weeds have overtaken its walls, and a recent farmer-herder crisis has damaged part of its structure.

The village head, Dachung Gwong, lamented that the absence of a functioning clinic puts everyone in the community at risk, especially women and children. With motorcycles as the main mode of transport, villagers face deadly risks travelling to distant healthcare centres, particularly at night, when insecurity is at its worst.

“Herders attacked and killed my son, his wife, and my granddaughter while they were returning from the clinic in Vwak,” recounted Laraba Choji, a resident whose voice trembled with grief.

ALSO READ: Insecurity: Infant, seven others killed in another Plateau community attack

Mr Gwong said the community has reached out to local authorities on several occasions, pleading for the clinic to be completed, but their cries have gone unanswered.

“We want them to complete this clinic,” he said. “We can’t point to any dividend of democracy in this community, but we vote during elections —the ballot boxes get here,” Jugu Bulus, the spokesperson of the Tan-Jol Youth Council, said. “Even a good water system like a borehole where we can get clean water from, we don’t have it (sic). We don’t even have a single primary school in this community.”

Back view of the abandoned clinic in Tan-Jol

Local clinic overwhelmed

The closest health facility to Tan-Jol is the clinic at Vwak that couldn’t manage Mrs Joseph’s labour earlier this year. It is not only under-equipped, the few staff who work there are also overwhelmed.

According to Doreen Ngwe, the officer in charge of the Vwak Primary Health Clinic, more than six nearby communities including Tan-Jol depend on the clinic. “We are also short-staffed at the moment, and it makes the work even more stressful,” she told UDEME. “Had it been there are more health facilities in the close communities it would have been better.”

The signage of the clinic in Vwak

Anytime there’s an outbreak of the farmers-herders crisis in the community, Mrs Ngwe and her staff are stuck between attending to the several casualties or fleeing for their safety. “It’s a struggle,” she added.

Gov’t remains mum

The government’s silence is deafening. On 2 September, UDEME submitted a Freedom of Information request to the executive secretary of the Plateau State Primary Health Care Development Agency in Jos requesting detailed information on the abandoned project. Despite multiple follow-up calls and messages to the office secretary, there has been no response.

Two weeks after the FOI was submitted, the office confirmed that it was forwarded to the agency’s Director of Administration. Subsequent inquiries were ignored, and the FOI has yet to be responded to at the time of this report.