It used to be described and indeed designated
as a centre of medical excellence in Nigeria.
Today, no one is sure anymore. Not many can
vouch for the excellence of the over 50-year-
old University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital
(UNTH) in Enugu State. Until the recent past,
it used to be the pride of the east.
Apart from earning pre-eminence in heart
ailments, including open heart surgery, any
case which defied physicians anywhere in the
east of Nigeria was referred to UNTH. The
mere knowledge that a complex ailment had
found space in UNTH would give patients a
certain placebo-effect of relief.
However, the report out of Ituku-Ozalla, the
abode of the sprawling hospice cum institution
of medical sciences, is quite unbecoming of
the noble profession of medicine. The
Association of Resident Doctors (ARDs) at
UNTH during a press briefing last week, told
the world that the complex is better off shut
down than to pretend to be operational though
its management systems had collapsed.
In their words: “We have decided to embark on
an indefinite strike over the entire failure in the
system. The aims for which this tertiary
hospital was established which is service,
research and training have failed totally.
UNTH being on strike is better. The hospital
has been turned to a money collecting centre
where patients are made to pay for oxygen
when they did not use same.
“In times of emergency, common
investigations like HB, CT scan, blood banks
tests cannot be done in the hospital. Patients
are made to travel 20 km to private hospitals
in the metropolis to do these tests which
compound a simple ailment to a complex one.
In (some) cases patients die as a result.
“We carry out surgeries with torch and candle
lights following power failure and
dysfunctional generators. It is only the poorest
of the poor that come to UNTH as a last
resort…”
Though there has not been any refutation
from the UNTH authorities, the allegations are
too grievous to be ignored and that they
would emanate at all from the quarters of
UNTH suggests a thoroughly deprecated
situation. Even downtown clinics would never
carry out surgical procedures under such
conditions as described by the ARDs above.
If the assertions of the ARDs are true by any
margin, then we dare say that UNTH is in
itself, in dire need of an emergency ‘surgical’
procedure that must be comprehensive and
total. It means that the citadel of medical
training and specialist medicare has gone to
the dogs and is in need of urgent retrieval.
We urge the federal government to
immediately set up an enquiry to determine
the true state of affairs at the institution:
when the rot set in; the root causes and why.
It is also important to find out what level of
funding has been availed the institution in the
past five years for instance and what manner
of management has been at the helm over this
period. We must also remark that a few
Federal Medical Centres have been in the
doldrums with management at loggerheads
with staff.
The odious news coming from UNTH is not
about the ARDs or the management of the
UNTH; it is about Nigeria and her essence as
an organic member of the human community.
Medicine is standardized practice; a heart
procedure in Nigeria, for instance, is the same
anywhere on the globe. We cannot hope to
earn the respect and regard of other peoples
of the world if we allow a certain level of
degeneracy to pervade important affairs of
our lives. Is there a chance that the Federal
Ministry of Health is on vacation?
SOURCE : Editorial Page, The Nation Newspaper.
Thursday October 29th 2015 Edition
0 comments:
Post a Comment