allAfrica.com: Nigeria: UMTH - Stretched By High Patronage (Page 1 of 2)

The University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital (UMTH) is bursting at the seams and its facilities are obviously overstretched. The reasons are not far fetched: the host community Maiduguri, is cosmopolitan and borders three countries namely, Chad, Cameroon and Niger.

The situation contradicts the initial mandate of the institution which is to teach, conduct research and offer specialized services as conceived 25 years ago when it was established.

The hospital parades 356 nurses, 22 pharmacists, 216 doctors, comprising of 69 consultants, 125 registrars and 22 medical officers, most of whom have the mandate to teach, research and offer specialize services, but they had to deal with numerous cases. For instance they had in 2007, scrutinized 196, 845 laboratory tests, 223, 697 radiology tests and tending to over 84,787, with unconfirmed number of HIV/AIDS patients, that the hospital manages.

Sources at the General Out-Patients Department (GOPD) of the hospital disclosed that about 74,626 persons were treated in 2007 alone. However, these figures are conservative as some persons get treated without being officially registered. However, 80 per cent of the cases which according to the institution, should have been the responsibility of the Primary Health Care, are taken by UMTH, further compounding the problems of the hospital.

Further checks at the clinics, wards, laboratories, theatres and teaching sections of both the Medical and Nursing students in the hospital indicate profound human traffic. Although additional classrooms, halls and laboratories are being provided, yet the congestion remains.

The situation is the same at the Obstetric and Gynecology Department, as well as the Presidents Emergency Program for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) clinics for those living with HIV/AIDs, where the affected persons jostle for the available anti - retroviral drugs.

Speaking on the issue, Chairman, Medical Advisory Committee (CMAC) of the hospital, Dr Alim Gamace Madziga, reaffirmed that the hospital has had bed occupancy of almost 90 per cent to 100 per cent in the last 3 to 4 years, and up till now, if you go to the wards, you will hardly find an empty bed space and this has been a recent turn around in a teaching hospital like this because as you are aware, a teaching hospital is a tertiary health care centre. That is to say, there must be primary, there must be secondary and then tertiary health centers", the CMAC explained, giving an analogy with a pyramid:

"A pyramid has a tip and a broad base, where the broad base is a large number of people and the tip with probably one or two people. But now, this pyramid has been inverted, the teaching hospital is suppose to have a few number of cases, a Consultant is suppose to have a few number of specialized cases that have gone through all the stages of health care" said the CMAC. Adding that many factors like the incessant industrial strike in the health sector at the state level translated into the kind of congestion that was experienced.

"He stated further, the perception of the public, regarding our services that they are relatively inadequate is really not true, because, the services and the facilities are over whelmed, so they will be perceived as inadequate. Let me give you an example, if you come for an intravenous Angiorography, specialized X-ray for the kidney, you are given a booking of about 3 months because all the dates are filled up by people. So that person goes home thinking our services are poor", he said. That these constrains have not made their mandate to fail but only affected services; where a doctor is expected to examine a patient for one hour but does so in 30 minutes.

As far as standard is concerned in the country, the UMTH is said to remain one of the best with one of the lowest charges, said the Head of the Public Relations unit of the hospital. According to him, "the influx of huge population into the hospital cannot be a yardstick to measure standards as long as the people are treated satisfactorily by doctors," said the PRO.

Also in the view of Dr Hyedima Garga Bwala of the Retainership G.O.P.D and Amenity Services of the UMTH, the population crisis does not seem to take a turn on the quality of care, the only problem is that, it affects research because people do not just have time for the research; they spend so much time attending to a lot of patients. "And this is at the expense of the staff, the laboratories, and the services provided", said Dr Bwala, adding that, the hospital has been upgraded through the VAMED project with high-tech machines to facilitate the treatment of complex cases like liver, brain problems, kidney and cancer. The Federal Government/VAMED modernization and re - equipping of hospitals prospect has injected a new live-wire to the Hospital. The acquisition of state of the art facilities have improved on health care delivery/ services, so much so that to travel abroad for medical attention is now a matter of choice but not necessity.

But a doctor who proffered anonymity argued that standard should not be measured by how well maintained the wards and clinics are or the quality of food but rather, "how many patients survived and how many died, it is only through such statistics that one can measure the performance of a hospital in a given society."

web allafrica.com	Enter your search terms	Submit search form
OR subscribers use AllAfrica's premium search engine


Use our pull-down menus to find more stories

Today's Most Active Stories