Delta State governor, Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan, has warned wealthy Deltans to steer clear from the state free rural health scheme, saying it is for the poor in the state.

Speaking to newsmen,  over the weekend at the Warri Central Hospital, shortly after visiting beneficiaries of the scheme, the governor implored wealthy Deltans to look elsewhere for medical treatment and leave the scheme for those who cannot afford quality medical treatment.

Uduaghan, who revealed that 16,433 patients had so far been treated by the health team said it was not possible for the state government to pick up the medical bills of all  residents with ill-health.

He said; “This is a programme that we embarked upon from the beginning of this administration.We do it because we realised that it is not possible for everybody to be able to pay for health, health is an expensive venture and ill-health is not something that anybody prays for, it does not recognise whether you are poor or you are rich.

“For those who are wealthy, when they are sick, they have access to medical treatment because they can pay for it.

"We realised that alot of our people cannot pay for their treatment and so we put this free health service in place, basically for the poor and for those in rural communities.

“Periodically, we send our health team to communities. In the last two and half months, we have sent our health team to various parts of the state and they have treated over 16,422 patients across the state free of charge and many of these are cases of infection, malaria, hypertension, diabetes and eye problem and we also treated children."

According to him; This free rural health scheme is in addition to our free maternal health service that we are currently undertaking. People who can afford medical treatment should not abuse this scheme, I want to appeal to them that it is not possible for the state to treat everybody that is ill.

"Every year, we spend about N70 to N100 million on the scheme, but as we have more pressures, the budget will go up", he said.