MEDICAL practitioners from the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital (UITH) Association of Resident Doctors have revealed how they used lamps and lights to treat patients due to epileptic power supply at the facility.
Revealing how dire the situation is, Dr Oyinlola Oluwagbemiga, the immediate past president of the association and his successor Dr Ade Faponle, pointed out that doctors have had to use lamps, torchlight and phone lights to treat patients. They stated that this anomaly posed a serious health hazard to patients, adding that they have had to reschedule major procedures to avoid risking the lives of the patients because of frequent outages.
Dr Oluwagbemiga said: “There are certain procedures we embark upon that you have to complete 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 and 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. Then 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.”
Doctors are currently on strike across Nigeria complaining about a series of issue, including salary arrears and work working conditions. Dr Faponle, also accused the hospital's management of short-changing doctors in their January and February salaries.
However, the hospital's director of administration Ganiyu Yusuf said the management of the hospital spent about N16m (£55,900) monthly on diesel and N3m (£10,500) monthly on its electricity bill to the Ibadan Distribution Electricity Company (IBDEC). He added that the prevailing power challenge was a national problem and not peculiar to UITH.
Mr Yusuf said the major grouse of the doctors was the non-payment of their skipping allowances for January and February. He stated that the UITH chief medical director Dr Abdulwaheed Olatinwo, had devised the means to pay them to ensure that peace reigned in the hospital.
“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 and the problem affects everybody, not only the hospital.
"We spend N16m monthly to buy diesel and we have a 500KV generator and another 350kv generator, as well as many other smaller generators to power each unit and department. The N16m that we pay is different from the N3m that we pay to IBEDC every month," Mr Yusuf added.
He revealed that the hospital lost three people in an attempt to stabilise the power supply, with one of them being electrocuted and another falling in water. According to Mr Yusuf, the UITH is trying to link up with the University of Ilorin and take power from Ganmo.
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