ATTN: Gov Samuel Ortom,''On My Experience At Benue State University Teaching Hospital Makurdi'';

This is a letter written to the Governor by one of her citizens following  her observation/experience at the BSU Teaching hospital.Please read.


The Gov. Samuel Ortom
The Benue people’s House
Benue State

Attention;
Benue State Commissioner of Health
Speaker, BNSHOA
Chairman, Health Committee
BNSHOA


AN OPEN LETTER TO GOV. SAMUEL ORTOM ON MY EXPERIENCE AT THE BSU TEACHING HOSPITAL, MAKURDII must first Congratulate you Sir, on the recent graduation of doctors from the Benue State University College of HealthSciences; this has not been achieved since the launch of that program12 years ago. Under your administration, 152 medical doctors graduated. This is an unprecedented event.

Dear Gov. Ortom, I will also say congratulations on the approval and release of N3.7milion for their registration with the Dental and Medical Council of Nigeria. It shows Sir, that you are a man of the book who believes in legalities. I also pray that as this fourth set of doctors graduate, they will all be absorbed in the BSU Teaching hospital-BSUTH.
As it is characteristic of teaching hospitals, they work in tandem with the university, training doctors in addition to offering medical education to their students and resident physicians.

 Many teaching hospitals also serve as research institutes and I believe BSUTH should be no exception
Dear Gov. Ortom, I am writing to share my mixed experience at the teaching hospital, BSUTH ,this yuletide. I had the rare privilege of taking a loved one under emergency situations to the hospital, being on referral from a hospital in Gboko. I will spare you the near death happenstance from the poor services we received at the private hospital in Gboko, and I will focus on my interface at the BSUTH.

The emergency unit received us in their traditional way of attending to accident and emergency cases, and although I expected a quicker response, I commend the attention to details they subsequently displayed in reviewing the patient. This experience would soon form a basis for my week long desperate and unbelievable engagements with the personnel as well as the infrastructure at the teaching hospital.

Sir, my patient required a couple of OTC drugs including normal saline water, we could not access these at the hospital’s Pharmacy. She is an accident victim who was rendered immobile and required an xray before further diagnosis could be made but the xray department were not operational due to faulty equipments. This situation compelled us to, painfully, take her to the Federal Medical Centre for the xray. 

These unfortunately became the trend throughout my sojourn at the BSUTH. EVERY drug, test, hospital need, surgical need and even personal need could only be bought from the pharmacies outside the hospital. The hospital seems to have totally run out of supplies and equipment. The only thing it had going was the expertise and willingness of the medical personnel.

Conservatively, my family spent close to two hundred thousand naira in the purchase of all the aforementioned from the other pharmacies outside BSUTH. These monies, including several others, could easily have been raked in by the teaching hospital and in turn may have facilitated to create a better funded institution.

On the quality of personnel service, I had the fortune of knowing some doctors who were graduates of my alma mater and would immediately call them at the dire need of medical attention requiring judgement on supply and drug options. However, this will be the misfortune of many sick people who would not have this privilege to have medical staff ponder options with them.

My surmised position of this will be the need to employ more staff at the hospital most especially nurses. There is presently a dearth of nursing care and I understand it is due to the closure of the nursing schools in the state? I particularly sympathized with an exhausted pharmacist who quickly prayed that more hands were brought on board.

In my engagement with the staff, a few ascribed the desperate situation to the nationally accepted Treasury Single Account which hampers the smooth flow of operations/increased bureaucracy in such institutions like hospitals; others said it was due to the reduction in their monthly allocations, still, some said it was purely bad management, more said no, the management had done the best they could, given the circumstances, and for many junior staff, there was a familiar ‘government worker lackadaisical attitude which manifested in very poor hygiene in the wards, rest rooms, and as seen in the well laid out brown lawns in the hospital compounds owing to long owed salaries from the outsourced companies.

Dear Governor, I believe there were more reversible failures than I witnessed. And that is why I make this appeal to you : we are surrounded by private hospitals that collect more money for far less medical care, therefore I strongly believe that BSUTH is the golden treasure of Benue state health care. It saves lives, provides jobs and more importantly hones our future doctors. It belongs to all, the poor and the rich. We should jealously grow it for what it is worth.
Sir, BSUTH deserves all the attention you can give.


Thanks for your time.


Long Live Gov Samuel OrtomLong live BSUTHLong live Benue State
Sincerely yours,
Benue Indigene
AZEGE,Alu