“For all the hospitals there must be electricity, water and a conducive atmosphere for patients to be adequately treated,” he said. The minister also reaffirmed government’s commitment to revamp and rebuild over 10,000 primary health centres and promised that the project would commence in a few months’ time. “Government will soon start building over 10,000 primary healthcare centers out of the 30,000 needed in two years. It is not a new idea, what is new is the new commitment to implement it.

In 2012, Nigerian agreed to implement 30,000 healthcare centres. So what we want is to make this happen. We have submitted the proposal to the presidency and it is under review. What we are looking for is how to sustain this project,” he said. However, the Minister was taken aback during his tour of LUTH’s Accident and Emergency ward, when he met the unit filled up with patients, occupying even the walkways. He noted that some of them should have been treated and discharged or moved to the general wards. “We believe that the emergency unit is the face of the hospital.

No one will give you credit if you fail on emergency. What I saw this morning was congestion. When the accident and emergency unit is congested, it cannot absolve new cases. “LUTH should operate a system that leads to the evacuation of patients on Accident and Emergency unit within 24hrs. Once you give first aid treatments, move them to the wards or discharge them if they are stable in order to create space for new cases”, he directed.” The nation’s epileptic electric power situation was another problem that confronted the minister at the Accident and Emergency unit.

The unit was in total darkness. He was told that the two generators dedicated to the unit packed up due to over work. Prof. Adewole admitted to newsmen at the end of the visit that he was a bit unhappy about the light situation at the unit but noted that it was a reflection of the general situation in the country thus, the situation in the hospital was not an isolated case. He however commended the hospital management for establishing its independent power plant. “LUTH will become a bright spot in the country by the time the independent power plant is commissioned,” he assured.

The minister also told journalists of plans by the Buhari administration, to add 10,000MW to the national grid this year and expressed hope that the power situation would improve not only in LUTH but in the nation at large. Prof. Adewole was also informed at the A&E unit that every accident victim brought to the unit are attended to, whether or not they have money. Prof. Adewole urged that the policy must continue in every Teaching hospital adding that this was emphasised at the last Council on Health meeting.

He also urged the hospital to absolve the bills of indigent patients. “We cannot justify denying poor Nigerians treatment because they do not have money. Nigerians who are poor should enjoy our services. They are Nigerians, until we prove that they are not Nigerians. Every indigent Nigerian must be treated at our hospitals without charges. However, we are appealing to Nigerians to be genuine to the system because we cannot take care of everybody free of charge until a system of insurance scheme or a form of health levy is put in place to create the resources to take care of everybody.

For now, we will take care of the poor, but we want them to be truly poor. Based on this, we will have a social system that will try to identify them, locate where they live and try to take care of them”, he added. Prof. Adewole also spoke of plans by the health ministry to implement The National Health Act (NHA) and also work towards the repairing and procurement of radiotherapy machines in the nation’s tertiary institutions But all these plans, according to him, cannot be effectively implemented without proper funding.

He admitted that government spending on health “is quite poor,” adding that “When you look at the 2013 data released by World Bank, Nigeria has the least contribution from government spending on healthcare in Africa. We were only behind South Sudan in terms of the percentage of the GDP devoted to health.”

Source: NationalMirror