Farewell to a Pioneering Doctor

MB BS FRCS, FRCSE

November 1938 - January 2012

The Diriyai Family of Kaiama, the Kaiama Community and the entire people of Kolokuma-Opokuma Local Government Area have been thrown into mourning by the death of their pioneer medical doctor, Dr Pianto Egberipou. Dr Egberipou died in an Indian hospital on Wednesday January 3 2012 aged 73 years.

By his death, Kolokuma-Opokuma Local Government Area, Bayelsa State and indeed Nigeria have lost an illustrious son and a pioneering surgeon.

Pianto was an alumnus of the famous Okrika Grammar School and he later he attended the University of Lagos Medical School obtaining his MB BS degrees. He then proceeded to do specialist training in surgery in Great Britain and obtained the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of  Edinburgh (FRCSE) and later the  Fellowship of the West African College of Surgeons (FWACS).

He was a one-time chairman of the Health Management Board of Rivers State of Nigeria and a consultant surgeon at the Delta Specialist Clinic in Port Harcourt.

Dr Egberipou has been an outstanding son of Kolokuma Opokuma having worked assiduously to help the area in his calling principally as a medical practitioner, but also as a health administrator and as law maker. He represented the area as a Member of the Federal House of Representatives in the Second Republic.

Dr Egberipou will be greatly missed by his professional colleagues especially his current colleagues at the Okolobiri Teaching Hospital of the Niger Delta University, and all the numerous people whose lives he touched over more than four decades through his professional duties and his philanthropy.

He is survived by many children and grandchildren.

The body has been flown home and burial arrangements have been scheduled for Saturday, March 3 , 2012 after a funeral service in St Mark's Anglican Cathedral, Kaiama.