Avuru Donates ~$2MM Hospital to Oil Community

Catholic Diocese of Warri to administer one of the Biggest Health Facilities in Delta State

Austin Avuru, Chief Executive of Seplat Petroleum, has completed a 375Million Naira ($1.9Million), 70 bed health facility in Abbi, in the oil producing Delta State of Nigeria.

The hospital comprises eight bungalows, housing an accident emergency bay, a male ward, a female ward, a maternity ward, and a children’s ward. There’s an outpatient clinic, a full digital X ray unit, a laboratory, an ambulance, a kitchen, a canteen and several other services. Each of the wards has two private rooms for people who might choose the privilege to pay a little more.

The facility will be formally opened Sunday, April 26, 2015.“It is my pleasure to personally invite you to the Opening Ceremony of the Catholic Hospital, Abbi, Delta State”, Avuru wrote to friends last week, “a facility that I helped to build and subsequently handed over to the Catholic Diocese of Warri”.

The hospital  has nothing to do with community relations unit of either Platform Petroleum, the marginal field operator Avuru founded, or Seplat Petroleum, of which he is Managing Director.

“I put aside 20% of my income for the past five years to build a church and a hospital for the community in which I was raised”, Avuru told Africa Oil+Gas Report. “It so happened that the church, because it is smaller, was completed earlier” and dedicated in October 2013. “This hospital was completed in December 2014”.

The decision to hand it to the Catholic Church to run was to be sure it was in the hands of an organization that could be trusted to run it properly. “The biggest cost element in running the facility is the overheads and government should be a natural choice”, Avuru admits. But he wasn’t sure there was a health facility in Delta state which wasn’t run down. “It becomes another outlet of the ministry, trapped in inefficient bureaucracy”. So, does the administration and maintenance by the Catholic Church guarantee adequate financing? The hospital will charge fees normally expected of a non-profit but self-sustaining medical facility.

“My estimation is that in the first three years, they will need help”, Avuru explains in a telephone interview, “I have a budget to support them for those teething three years”.The Catholic Church Hospital in Abbi becomes the foundational project of Austin Avuru’s foundation, whose name he hasn’t publicly come out with. “I have instituted a community health scheme where I pay an annual premium of Three Million Naira ($15,000) from which about 300 registered recipients will receive free medical care (paid for by medical insurance)”, Avuru rounds up. “You know I am not a believer in subsidies”.