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| Epileptic Power Supply At University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital |
The immediate past president
of the Association of Resident Doctors, University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital
branch, Dr. Oyinlola Oluwagbemiga and his successor, Dr. Ade Faponle, on
Wednesday said that due to epileptic power supply in the hospital, doctors have
had to use lamps, torchlight and phone lights to treat patients.
The
Punch report continues:
They
stated that this anomaly posed a serious health hazard to the patient, adding
that they have had to reschedule major procedures to avoid risking the lives of
the patients because of frequent outages.
They
spoke during a media briefing in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital, on the
sidelines of the ongoing nationwide strike of the doctors.
Oluwagbemiga
said, “There are certain procedures we embark upon, you have to complete them
using your torchlight or phone lights. Imagine that you are in an emergency
where you have to resuscitate a patient and you resort to that. It is that bad.
It even stretches to sanitation.
“We
have reached the point where you are having a major procedure and all you can
hear is ‘please we can only supply light for the next two hours, make sure you
complete your operation.’ And there are operations that last for four or more
hours. So if you have such, you have to reschedule because you have been told
ab-initio that you are on your own should you embark on such.”
The
current ARD president, Faponle, also accused the hospitals management of
short-changing their January and February salaries.
But
the Director of Administration, UITH, Mr. Ganiyu Yusuf said the management of
the hospital spent about ₦16m monthly on diesel and ₦3m monthly on electricity
bill to the Ibadan Distribution Electricity Company.
Yusuf
said the prevailing power challenge was a national problem and not peculiar to
UITH.
He
also said the major grouse of the doctors was the non-payment of their skipping
allowances for January and February.
He
stated that the Chief Medical Director, UITH, Dr. Abdulwaheed Olatinwo had
devised the means to pay them their skipping allowances last year to ensure
that peace reigned in the hospital.
He
added that there was not budgetary provision for skipping allowances in the
2016 budget. According to him, Olatinwo even alerted the resident doctors on
time on the development.
Yusuf
said, “As management, we are not going to join issues with the resident
doctors. But we are going to state the facts. It is not news that electricity
generation in the country is bad. The problem affects everybody, not only the
hospital. We spend ₦16m monthly to buy diesel. We have a 500KV generator and
another 350kv generator, as well as many other smaller generators to power each
unit and department.
“The
₦16m that we pay is different from the ₦3m that we pay to IBEDC every month.
Imagine what ₦19m could have done, if we had steady power supply in the
country.
“We
have done what we could do as a management with the resources available. We
have separate generators for many sections. If you turn on the light in the
hospital because of the operations the doctors will do, we keep it running
until 4pm. Even when the power is on, how many of the doctors are ready to
perform surgeries? If we know that in our area power will come at a certain
time, you programme your activities.
“We lost three people in an
attempt to stabilize the power supply. One of them was electrocuted and another
dropped in water. What we are trying to do is to link up with the university
and take power from Ganmo. Imagine the huge cost.”
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