Outcry Greets Poor, Declining Healthcare Services at MAUTH

Outcry greets poor, declining healthcare services at MAUTH

By Samaila Mohammed, Yola

Patients and relatives are lamenting gradual and consistent decline in healthcare delivery service at Modibbo Adama University Teaching Hospital, (MAUTH) Yola, Adamawa state, Nigeria, when it should have recorded an impressive improvement with the upgrading of the hospital and facilities from federal medical centre to a teaching hospital.

In spite of the rising cost of treatment, some key service windows, especially in the area of investigations, appear not to be providing full services as it used to be. Patients are referred to private diagnostic centres outside the hospital for some investigations, when previously, private laboratory investigations were not accepted in the hospital.

People keep wondering why the decline? Are the service gaps deliberate? Are the anomalies contrived to kill the hospital by empowering private health facilities with a window to gain income at the expense of the indigent patient(s)? are these challenges caused by inadequate supply of medical consumables demanded by the service windows due largely to paucity of fund? The questions go ad infinitum.

Patients admitted to the hospital and relatives revealed to reporters on fact finding mission that unlike the previous time, they no longer enjoy uninterrupted power supply just as they lament serious water scarcity.

Sources told our reporter that dental service window equipped with the high tech facilities is going moribund and not giving optimal services.

“Due to the non availability of the consumables, patients are pleaded to keep being patient for days until the items are being provided,” a source told our reporter who was at the hospital on a fact finding mission.

Patients also said they experience delay in accessing National Health Insurance Services (NHIS). A patient who does not want to be quoted said, “We are usually asked to wait until code numbers are provided by the NHIS service providers. Although this cannot be attributed to the hospital, there is however the challenge associated with inadequate stocking of prescribed drugs at the NHIS pharmacy service window.”

Efforts to get authorities of the hospital to speak on the issues did not yield fruits.

When contacted, the head of information and media relations of the hospital, Muhammad Dodo was away for official engagement and said he would not respond on phone. The Acting CMD was also not available at at press time.

Some staff interviewed on condition of anonymity, disclosed that the challenges observed are real, but quickly added that they are associated with inadequate funding.

“The hospital is being managed by Acting CMD for close to a year and he is not given full financial authority to operate. The hospital is wading through financial turmoil because we are sending all the revenue we generated 100% to the federal purse and in return we have to wait for the crumbs which the federal government will send down to us.

“The federal government should look into the issue, to either grant the Acting CMD full financial authority or better still, appoint a substantive CMD for the hospital to stand on its feet,” they said.

The hospital has made a mark for carrying out multiple separations of conjoined twins, among other complicated surgeries when It was FMC. These feats were perhaps some of the compelling reasons for the upgrade of the hospital to teaching hospitals.

But going by the lamentations of patients and even some staff, it is glaring that the objective of upgrading the health institution is far from being achieved because instead of the hospital to record more mileages and breakthroughs, the reverse is seemingly the case.